tar ate my symlinks

[Brian Victor <bhv1@psu.edu>]

I backed up my debian installation with the following:

tar --preserve -cv / | ssh 192.168.2.10 'cat > linuxbackup.tar.bz2'

And attempted to restore it with the following:

ssh 192.168.2.10 'cat linuxbackup.tar.bz2' | tar -jxv

Both commands were run as root.  However, I now have a *lot* of broken
symlinks, which show up like this:
----------    1 root     root            0 Mar 17 13:19 xdvi.bin
----------    1 root     root            0 Mar 17 13:19 xmlproc_parse
----------    1 root     root            0 Mar 17 13:19 xmlproc_val
----------    1 root     root            0 Mar 17 13:19 yacc

Fixing the rc*/* symlinks allowed me to boot, but the system is still
practically unusable.  Is there something I can do or should have done
to preserve the symlinks?  And failing that, how do I get the system
back into a usable state?  It seems that /var/cache still contains all
the debs I've ever downloaded, and network access is working.

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps make my machine usable again.

-- 
Brian