It like we may have a bug in tar that ships with Centos. It looks like -o is mapped to --same-owner.

Some basic info....

uname -a Linux jazzy 2.6.9-34.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed May 24 08:14:29 CDT 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 4.3 (Final)

% /bin/tar --version tar (GNU tar) 1.14

--same-owner try extracting files with the same ownership --no-same-owner extract files as yourself

Compatibility options: -o when creating, same as --old-archive when extracting, same as --no-same-owner

and Now a test!

#goto tmp dir cd /tmp

#become root su - root

#create three test files touch afile bfile cfile

#verify ownership ls -l total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jun 26 11:16 afile -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jun 26 11:16 bfile -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jun 26 11:16 cfile

#create a tar archive tar zcvf testoh.tgz afile bfile cfil

#become regular user

tar -zxof testoh.tgz tar: afile: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Operation not ermitted tar: bfile: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Operation not ermitted tar: cfile: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Operation not ermitted tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

This error should not happen!

tar --no-same-owner -zxf testoh.tgz jazzy 328 % ls -l total 4 -rw------- 1 paulg tech 0 Jun 26 11:16 afile -rw------- 1 paulg tech 0 Jun 26 11:16 bfile -rw------- 1 paulg tech 0 Jun 26 11:16 cfile -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 125 Jun 26 11:17 testoh.tgz

This works but according to the manpages -o should also work!

It looks like -o is mapped to --same-owner

jazzy 329 % tar --same-owner -zxf testoh.tgz tar: afile: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Operation not ermitted tar: bfile: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Operation not ermitted tar: cfile: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Operation not ermitted tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Thanks Paul