[Bug-tar] lone zero block errors in 1.13.93

[Bdale Garbee]

A problem has been reported with tar 1.13.93 on Debian.  Details are available
at http://bugs.debian.org/235821.  The original report was:

  I was unpacking the tomcat4 source package, and was surprised to see this:

  tar: A lone zero block at 23642
  tar: Skipping to next header
  tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
  tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

  This happens when attempting to extract jakarta-tomcat-4.1.30-src.tar.gz 
  inside the tomcat4 4.1.30-1 source package.  The same tar is extractable 
  on woody, with tar 1.13.25-2.

Today I received an update that suggests this problem may have broader impact:

  This bug is demonstrable elsewhere too - for example on this file:

    
http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/greenfinch/greenfinch-0.0.1.tar.bz2

  However, in the case of this file it still extracts correctly (diff -r
  on extracted directory tree against output from a corresponding zip;
  timestamps are correct on files but not directories which may be
  expected anyway, I'm not sure) - i.e. it seems that tar still does its
  job but is incorrectly detecting an error as it's finishing up.  File
  extracts fine under the Debian stable version of tar.

Any help you can provide for getting this fixed would be greatly appreciated!
Because of the many other issues it resolves, I'd like to include this version
of tar in the next Debian stable release if we can get this problem resolved.

Bdale