Solaris/FreeBSD tar file incompatibility?

[adyas at twowaytv.co.uk]

Yup, fine.  In fact if I ftp from Solaris box A to FreeBSD box, then to 
Solaris box B, then tar tfv it, it looks fine.  It's only on the FreeBSD 
(4.2) machine that it looks odd.

A little more investigation reveals that Solaris' tar seems to stumble 
on long file names.  Ah, I've just read Matthew Seaman's reply which 
explains it nicely.  There were indeed some quite long file/paths in there.

Thanks,

Alex..

Sam Pikesley wrote:
> Hmm, does it look OK if you untar it on the Sun box? 
> 
> --- adyas at twowaytv.co.uk wrote: > Hi,
> 
>>Does anyone know of any tar incompatibilities
>>between Solaris (8) and
>>FreeBSD?  We're creating a tar file on a Solaris
>>box, (around 200MB) and
>>then attempting to un-tar it on a FreeBSD machine. 
>>The archive looks
>>different on the FreeBSD machine, files that were
>>within directories now
>>appear in the tar's root directory.
>>
>>We don't think the file is corrupt, having
>>transfered the file (ftp) a
>>number of times with the same results.
>>
>>Also, I'm sure I've done this before without any
>>problems, I'm thinking
>>maybe it's a file name length problem?
>>
>>The FreeBSD tar man page mentions -I for Solaris
>>compatibility, but I 
>>think that means the -I switch was added because
>>Solaris has a -I switch.
>>
>>Ta(r),
>>
>>Alex..