NetBSD 5 strangeness

[John Klos <john%ziaspace.com@localhost>]

Hi,

I've been trying to figure out why untarring gzipped tar files doesn't 
work on netbsd-5 on my VAXstation 4000/60 (it worked fine with RC2):

tar xzpf base.tgz
tar: Cannot identify format. Searching...
^C
tar: Signal caught, cleaning up.
tar: unknown format, 32256 bytes skipped in 3 secs (10752 bytes/sec)

and I noticed that even from a brand new tarball from ftp.netbsd.org's 
daily builds, some of the files in /usr/bin are OLD:

-r-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     2943 May  8  2008 zegrep
-r-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     2943 May  8  2008 zfgrep
-r-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     2943 May  8  2008 zgrep
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     3293 Apr 27  2008 znew
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     2984 Jul  6  2005 spell
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     2285 Jun 30  2005 shar
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     4009 May  1  2004 gzexe
-r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel     2474 Mar 29  2004 zcmp
-r-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel     2474 Mar 29  2004 zdiff
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     1926 Mar 29  2004 zmore
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     1377 Dec 28  2003 zforce
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     2520 Mar 28  2003 lp
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     1515 Jul 27  2000 skeyaudit
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     1984 Mar 22  2000 pagesize
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel       33 Jul 30  1999 machine
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     3262 Sep 12  1998 rcsfreeze
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel       18 Dec 29  1994 false
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel       18 Dec 29  1994 true
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     1922 Dec  7  1994 clear

How is this even possible? If these files are made as a result of a bulk 
build, how can they have dates that go back to the 1990s?

This is STRANGE...

John Klos