Re: tar-1.13.25 overwrites symlinks to directories when extracting

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Andrew Nesbit <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 17:22:38 +1000
> 
> Okay, say I have a tar file containing the following:
> 
> address@hidden:~$ tar tvf testtar.tar 
> drwxr-xr-x andrew/andrew     0 2002-04-07 14:21 opt/
> -rw-r--r-- andrew/andrew    23 2002-04-07 14:21 opt/testfile
> 
> I have $HOME/opt symlinked to $HOME/usr/opt/ like this:
> 
> address@hidden:~$ ls -la opt
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 andrew   andrew          7 Apr  7 17:17 opt -> usr/opt
> 
> When I extract the contents of testtar.tar from $HOME, instead of
> having testfile getting put in $HOME/usr/opt/ (which is what tar-1.13
> does, and what one would normally expect)

And which leads to some interesting security holes.  That is why the
behavior was changed.

If you prefer the old, unsafe behavior, you can use the --overwrite
option.  This is covered in the "Dealing with Old Files" node in the
documentation.