"Autolocating" is a feature of any tarball that was created with 
absolute paths, and is usually considered "a bad thing" as you can't
untar it to inspect the contents very easy.  Even without absolute
paths, 
untarring any tarball in the / directory will "relocate" stuff for you.  

George


Craig White wrote:
> 
> OK - installing bash on Mac OS was a breeze because I downloaded a
> tar-binary that was a breeze and did something that I never saw
> before...
> 
> from the / level prompt...
> 
>    tar zxvf /path_to_file/bash-2.0.5-osx.tgz
> 
> expanded to 3 trees and automatically put the contents of the  /etc -
> /bin  - /usr trees in their couterparts. This was really as simple as
> rpm (but of course relying on the person that created the binary to
> check any needed dependencies, share-objects or libraries. Wow, rpm
> isn't any easier than that was.
> 
> Does linux do this with tar distributed code and I've missed it all
> this time because I typically take downloaded binaries to /opt before
> I 'un-tar' them?
> 
> Obviously, I shouldn't plan/trust binaries from untrusted sources -
> and I'm publicly spanking myself for downloading the binary but it
> was interesting to see that 'auto-locating' install.
> 
> Craig
> 
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