Thank you for your bug report. It turns out that the errors you are experiencing are not bugs, they are errors in your understanding of how to use tar.
The -f switch is intended to be followed _immediately_ with a filename. Following it with another option, such as --owner, or the -z option as part of an option string, is erroneous. The reason it works when not preceded with a dash, is that this is the "old-style" of specifying options in tar, in which all of the options were clumped together as one argument, and all parameters to those options were specified after that. tar should possibly emit an error when you are using --owner and --group, but not creating an archive: they are meant to be used during archive creation, and not extraction. They indicate what values to set the uid and gid of files in the archive. These values in the archive are usually ignored during extraction, unless you extract them as root, or specify the --same-owner option. If you have been relying on the tar manpage for documentation, I would recommend you use the texinfo-based documentation at http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/ , which is far more complete and informative. ** Changed in: tar (Ubuntu) Status: Unconfirmed => Rejected -- tar --owner and --group options don't work https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84106 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
