Issues while untaring in Linux- tarball created from Solaris

I am getting an error- Unknown file type 'A', extracted as normal file while un-tarring a set of files which has acl permissions set.

I had created the tar file in solaris as tar -cpfv Tarfilename.tar directory if I un-tar as tar xvpf Tarfilename.tar, it works great in solaris.

I had copied the tar file to Linux and tried to extract using tar xvpf, it dosen't throws the warning Unknown file type 'A', extracted as normal file and created files without ACL permissions.

tar --version : tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1

Tar Wars

The Solaris tar format handles extended headers differently to GNU tar leading to a number of incompatibilities.

star (Schily Tar) provides the best Linux support for the Solaris 7/8/9 format due to the work of Joerg Schilling over many years.

Install star on your system and run:

> star -xp artype=suntar f=Tarfilename.tar

Other things to note

There are no cygwin packages available for star

If you ever need to go back the other way, this question describes how to create a tarball on a Linux system that can read on a Solaris system.