> zlib: EIO from tar? Wat's that? And how does this rcmd come into the game? > What is rcmd? This looks very suspicious.
rcmd is the libc function that does the client side of the rsh protocol. tar uses this for rmt. If you do "tar -f host:/dev/rmt0" then tar uses rcmd to do "rsh host /etc/rmt /dev/rmt0". So if you are using a file name with a colon in it, that could explain it. Use --force-local to avoid that.
