[tex-live] Installation on Solaris 8

[Donald A. Pellegrino Jr.]

While installing TeX Live 2005 on Solaris 8 I found that the "tar cf - filename" commands failed. It seems this may be a syntax that GNU tar understands but that Solaris tar does not. The installation failed when run with a default root login shell. I was able to work around the problem by using a root login with the PATH modified to prefer GNU tar. An enhancement to the installer would be to warn the user if GNU tar is necessary and not found, or to use a syntax of tar that is compatible across both versions. I would be happy to assist with such a change if someone could let me know which source to review. Additionally it may be helpful to others to post this work-around on http://tug.org/texlive/bugs.html.