Mark W. Eichin writes ("Re: Bug#2178: dpkg unclear error message"):
> (cc'ed to ian murdock because it might be a tar bug)
No, dpkg has a tarfile extractor built in, that's where the bug is.
Bruce, you wrote it - can you make it handle whatever GNU tar does for
long filenames ?
Otherwise I suppose we'll have to live with this problem for a bit ...
Ian.