Re: [Help-tar] Problem with tar automatically creating hard links

[Paul Eggert]

Generally speaking, you can't retrieve a hard link from a
tar file, without the original being there.  This is true for
traditional tar, e.g., on Solaris 10:

$ touch a
$ ln a b
$ tar cvf a.tar ./a a
a ./a 0K
a a link to ./a
$ tar tvf a.tar
tar: blocksize = 4
-rw-rw-r-- 5823/30       0 Mar 28 15:44 2013 ./a
-rw-rw-r-- 5823/30       0 Mar 28 15:44 2013 a linked to ./a
$ rm a
$ tar xvf a.tar a
tar: blocksize = 4
tar: a: cannot link

I expect that your friend will get similar results with
older GNU tar.  New GNU tar is smarter about not
including duplicates of files, which explains why you're
seeing the issue and your friend is now.