Software Update failures seemingly caused by a corrupt tar binary

Folks,
just this last day I got a sw update prompt on my G4 mini (leopard) to get a quicktime and ilife browser update.. did the usual steps to start the download.. the download would complete but then it prompted to state that it could open the update archive. This caused the update to exit and leave 2 tar files in the Trash
I rebooted and tried again but the same issue occurred.
Seeing that the files in the trash were tar archives, I moved them to the desktop and tried to open them.. the archive utility reported it could not open them.. giving some broken pipe error. The files were not empty.. they were the size as reported by the update..75M for QuickTime76_Leopard.tar and 3.8M for iLifeMediaBrowser_v2.tar.
So I copied these files to my Linux server and managed to untar them without issues.. inside each is a signature and tar'd pkg file.. I untar'd the pkg files and copied these back to the mini.. both installed fine interactively via their installer ui without issues and after a reboot, Quicktime shows up as version 7.6.
So we have 2 tars that the mini archive app cannot open. So I try the prompt and untar them that way.. but I get permission denied. Checking the rights of /usr/bin/tar, I found that there were no x rights there.. other binaries in /usr/bin were fine. So I issued a sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/tar.. that restored the execute rights but it does nothing with the archive.. even a tar -help gives out nothing. The file size for the binary seems to be zero.. so its like the binary was nobbled somehow.
I ran the following shell commands to verify the binary I have and its checksum.. I also issued an ls -alh on gzip just to show how the group and file size are clearly wrong.
$ tar --help
$ which tar
/usr/bin/tar
$ ls -alh /usr/bin/tar
-r-xr-xr-x@ 41319 root 1483179 0B 11 Jul 2008 /usr/bin/tar
$ md5 /usr/bin/tar
MD5 (/usr/bin/tar) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
ls -alh /usr/bin/gzip
-rwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136K 6 Oct 2007 /usr/bin/gzip
So it appears I've got a broken tar command and hence update and probably many other OS activities could be broken.
I'd like to know if this has happened to anyone else and if there is a quick fix.. obviously a fresh install will solve this.. but its a odd thing to have occurred and smells of either a virus or issue elsewhere.

i have the same problem.
go to and delete everything in my HD/Library/Updates.
then run update again and choose only the leopard update.
best to use a cable than wireless, this is a huge file.
hope this helps... sara

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How to put iPod touch / iPhone into DFU mode « Karthik's scribblings
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Hey Ickleman,
Welcome to the BlackBerry Support Community Forums.
Thanks for the question.
Follow the steps in this KB article to resolve the software update failure: www.blackberry.com/btsc/KB29289
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Cheers.
-ViciousFerret
Come follow your BlackBerry Technical Team on Twitter! @BlackBerryHelp
Be sure to click Like! for those who have helped you.
Click Accept as Solution for posts that have solved your issue(s)!

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Software Update failures seemingly caused by a corrupt tar binary

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