Since version 1.22, GNU tar has changed his behavior about the way it handle decompressors. This has caused a lot of problems, and there is even a bug reported #532570. However one problem is specific to GNU/kFreeBSD and can't be reproduced on GNU/Linux. The following command now exits with a non-zero exit value, as it is killed by a SIGPIPE: cat test.tar.gz | tar -xvzf - It would be nice if someone can find time to debug the problem.
It looks like "problem solved", I am just waiting for "GNU tar 1.22 test suite" pass. It is not GNU/kFreeBSD specific. E-mail to BTS will follow. Petr