gnu tar applying user:group to untar

When I, or any other user, tar -xzvf file.tar.gz the resulting uncompressed directory/file has the owner:group of a user on my system, but not that of the user who untared it.

How can this be? Is there a .conf file for gnutar that I'm not aware of?

Details:

--> running RedHat 7.1
--> 45 users on this box
--> all untared files get privileges of one particular user on the system.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

vj

it sounds like your presearving the orignal owner:group of the archived dir/files.

Double check the man page for tar. I know on my sun boxes there is an option for it.

No,...even if users download tarballs from the internet, ... when they gunzip and tar the file, this one user's owner:group is applied to the file.

Really weird.

VJ

That is the way the file was tar'd. Since it actually only stores the UID #, as opposed to the actual name; when it's unpacked, it will assume the name of whoever the UID matches in your passwd file. The best bet would be to chown the new directory. You may need to be root to do this.

I think there may be an option in some versions of tar that will allow you to unpack the file with the current user's permissions. Check the tar man-page for your local distribution.

Thanks. Actually one of my user's UID was messed up. I deleted the user and then added her. Everything works fine now.

VJ