On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, David Laight wrote:

: Since the actual problem is that following a symlink might take
: you outside the current directory hierarchy, why not make pax
: chroot to the current directory before reading the archive?

You have to do it as root.  You can't support -C properly.

And, last but not least, `suddenly' followed symlinks simply Should Not
Happen in a regular archive, regardless of where the link points.  Hence the
reason that my pax-mods proposals say nothing about whether the symlinks
contain "../" or start with "/".

Restricting pax from following extant symlinks by default, while providing
an option to allow it, should *not* affect any of its expected normal
behavior.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>