Hi All

I have a peculiar problem that I haven't been able to figure out. I have googled and searched on the forums but haven't yet been able to find someone with a similar problem.

We have a linux server that acts as a web frontend for files that are accessed via nfs on a Windows 2003 server. Because they are lots of small files we use tar to back them up before writing the single large tar.gz file to tape.

We've encountered a problem where the symlinks in the tar point to / when untarred. We have a number of servers configured in this setup so I was able to compare them to see if the same problem occurred on all.

Of our three servers running Red Hat 7.3 (the rest run Centos 5.1 and work perfectly), Server A untars the symlink with it pointing to the right location while Servers B and C untar it with it point to /. They are all using kernel 2.4.20-28.7smp, gnu tar 1.13.25, nfs-utils 0.3.3-6.73 and have the nfs mount point with the same set of options.

We set up a sandbox environment, which is basically a restore of one of the systems, but running kernel 2.4.18-3smp. I can create a symlink on the nfs share on this system, tar it and untar it perfectly. However, if I untar a backup from Server C's environment then the symlink once again points to /.

I don't think it's the kernel version because it works perfectly on Server A, which has the same kernel as Server C.

I've noticed, though, that symlinks on the local file system that are tarred untar properly so I think it has something to do with nfs. However, the symlinks work on the nfs share.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks
Steven

I've continued testing and am now even more confused than before. Untarring the symlinks no longer works on Server A and they now point to "." instead of "/". Nothing has been changed on any of the servers. I'm testing with the exact same files as before.