[Bug-tar] Error messages and how to avoid them?

[Hugh Sasse]

I've been trying to get about 4GB of files off a Unix server onto a PC,
using gnu tar on the Unix (Solaris) end and cygwin gnu tar on the PC.

Things go OK when packing the tar file ( just -jcvf as the options), but
unpacking on the PC I get errors about filenames too long, files existing
when links are unpacked (OK Windows doesn't support links), and finally I
get 
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

I'm not entirely sure what this means.  Does it mean

   * the job completed successfully apart from the earlier errors,
     which now give this error exit.

   * the job hit one error too many and died before the end?

My other question is, which I can't see from the help exactly:

Can I tell tar to truncate filenames that are too long (possibly
being warned if there are collisions as a result?  Do I need to
do that at creation?

I think I may need to recreate the tarfile with -h to get arond the
link options.  That's disappointing, because it took a long time on
this old Sun machine.  If there's a way round re-creating it I'd be
grateful to know about that.

        Thank you,
        Hugh