GNU tar Bug or problem preserving ctime values

[Tom Crane]

Dear All,
        I am trying to copy a filesystem with GNU tar and preserve the file's
ctime settings but without success. I am running tar version 1.13.7 under Linux
2.2.16. Here is a illustration of the problem;

Script started on Mon Nov  5 21:19:22 2001
address@hidden:/tmp# ls -lac /etc/host*
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1099 Oct  5 22:34 /etc/hosts.allow
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1163 Oct  5 22:34 /etc/hosts.allow.test
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1102 Aug 24 18:37 /etc/hosts.deny
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          442 May 21 19:01 /etc/hosts.lpd
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1522 Feb 20  2001 /etc/hosts
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root           27 Nov  1  2000 /etc/host.conf
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          320 Nov  1  2000 /etc/hosts.equiv
address@hidden:/tmp# tar -cplf - /etc/host* | tar -xpv --same-owner
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
etc/host.conf
etc/hosts
etc/hosts.allow
etc/hosts.allow.test
etc/hosts.deny
etc/hosts.equiv
etc/hosts.lpd
address@hidden:/tmp# ls -lac /tmp/etc/host*
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root           27 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/host.conf
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1522 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/hosts
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1099 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/hosts.allow
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1163 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/hosts.allow.test
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root         1102 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/hosts.deny
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          320 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/hosts.equiv
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          442 Nov  5 21:24 /tmp/etc/hosts.lpd
address@hidden:/tmp# exit
address@hidden:/tmp# whoami
root
exit

Script done on Mon Nov  5 21:24:45 2001

ie. the untarred files receive the current time rather than the original ctime
value. As the above command shows I am running as root and am not specifying
--atime-preserve.

My mistake or a bug...? Any ideas?

Thanks
Tom Crane.

-- 
Tom Crane, Dept. Physics, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill,
Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England. 
Email:  address@hidden
SPAN:   19.875
Fax:    +44 (0) 1784 472794