[NCLUG] tar questions

[rosing at peakfive.com]

Hi,

I'm trying to debug someone's mess in India and would appreciate some
help figuring out all the things that can possibly go wrong with tar.

This guy in India has a CD with a tar file on it.  I think there's
only one tar file on it but I might be wrong.  The tar file should
contain 3 files, brasm, brlink, and brdbg.  When they run

  tar -xvf /mnt/cdrom/beast*.exe.tar

they get

 tar : archive contains future timestamps 2002-06-12 07:56:28
 brasm
 tar : brasm cannot open : file exists
 tar : archive contains future timestamps 2002-06-12 07:56:28
 brlink
 tar : brlink cannot open : file exists
 tar : archive contains future timestamps 2002-06-12 07:56:28
 brdbg
 tar : brdbg cannot open : file exists
 tar : Errpr exit delayed from previous errors

Their machine probably has the wrong system time.  Will this cause
problems?  Or should they just use -xvmf?  And what do the errors

 tar : brasm cannot open : file exists
 tar : brlink cannot open : file exists
 tar : brdbg cannot open : file exists

mean?  What does opening a file mean with tar -x?  Is that what it's
trying to create?

I don't know if he has permission to write in the directory or what
else is in the directory.

Thanks,

Matt