It seems that a lot of people think that the problem with preserving permissions is not a ''misconfiguration''. Okay, let me say what I really think about it - it is a user error and a solution to that is to replace a user and press ''enter''. Seriously, if you are _already_ root on a system than system should not try to prevent you from doing stupid things. You are _god_. What is the difference between the problem with GNU tar and execution of a script that copies a shell into /tmp, makes it suid to root? NONE! If you are root, there is _no_ good reason to untar a file onto a filesystem which is accessible to users that allows suid programs to be run from. If you insist on doing that, it is up to you to squash the suid bit. Alex