I was recently upgrading my NetBSD-1.0 boxes to NetBSD-1.5.2.
One of my machines was experiencing some disk problems (since remedied)
and I wanted to ensure that everything loaded onto my drives was
correct...

So, I decided to use tar in diff mode to check that everything was OK.
I started noticing on-disk content which didn't match that on the tape.
After comparing the mismatch with my other boxes, though I found
it wasn't the result of disk errors.  Instead, the sets had been
untarred a bit oddly Typically the diffs against the tape consist of
hard and links which are missing or mis-linked. For example, many
of the symlinks are linked to the destination of the symlink they
were linked to, NOT to the symlink itself.  There are also (empty)
directories which are missing.

For example ...

% cd /
% tar dfz /cdrom/i386/binary/sets/base.tgz
./usr/lib/libdes.so.5 not linked to ./usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0
./usr/lib/libtermlib.so.0 not linked to ./usr/lib/libtermcap.so.0
./usr/share/man/cat1/i386: does not exist
./usr/share/man/cat3/i386: does not exist
./usr/share/man/cat5/i386: does not exist
./usr/share/man/man1/i386: does not exist
./usr/share/man/man3/i386: does not exist
./usr/share/man/man5/i386: does not exist
% (cd /usr/lib ; ls -li libdes.so.5 libtermlib.so.0)
lrwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  16 Aug 18 02:45 libdes.so.5 -> libcrypto.so.0.2
lrwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  17 Aug 18 02:45 libtermlib.so.0 -> libtermcap.so.0.4

% tar dfz /cdrom/i386/binary/sets/comp.tgz
./usr/lib/libdes.so not linked to ./usr/lib/libcrypto.so
./usr/lib/libtermlib.so not linked to ./usr/lib/libtermcap.so
./usr/share/man/cat1/fort77.0 not linked to ./usr/share/man/cat1/f77.0
./usr/share/man/man1/fort77.1 not linked to ./usr/share/man/man1/f77.1

% (cd /usr/share/man/cat1 ; ls -li /usr/share/man/cat1/*77.0)
23581 -r--r--r--  2 root  wheel  11861 Aug 17 22:47 f77.0
23559 -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  11861 Aug 17 22:47 fort77.0
23581 -r--r--r--  2 root  wheel  11861 Aug 17 22:47 g77.0

Is sysinst using pax in an incorrect manner to unpack the install sets?

Bolo