untar extracts files as different user

Question

I'm running on Ubuntu server as root user (according to whoami).

I'm trying to untar a package. Unfortunately the untarred folder and all files are somehow owned by another user (zabbix).

I did install zabbix recently but I am logged in as root so I expect the untarred files to be owened by root. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

tar encodes the numeric id of the owner and primary group of every file. When you untar a tarball all the owners will be set back to their original numeric id's, for example uid 500. What you have is the zabbix user in your system created as uid 500. Hence, when you restore the archive, the files appear to be owned by zabbix.

To confirm, try

id zabbix and ls -aln $DIRECTORY

My guess is they will be the same.

Answer 2

Add the --no-same-owner parameter to your command (assuming a gnu tar). When running as root, tar automatically preservers file ownership and permissions.

As an aside: Are you sure you really need to be doing whatever you're doing as root?