Generally speaking, you can't retrieve a hard link from a tar file, without the original being there. This is true for traditional tar, e.g., on Solaris 10:
$ touch a $ ln a b $ tar cvf a.tar ./a a a ./a 0K a a link to ./a $ tar tvf a.tar tar: blocksize = 4 -rw-rw-r-- 5823/30 0 Mar 28 15:44 2013 ./a -rw-rw-r-- 5823/30 0 Mar 28 15:44 2013 a linked to ./a $ rm a $ tar xvf a.tar a tar: blocksize = 4 tar: a: cannot link I expect that your friend will get similar results with older GNU tar. New GNU tar is smarter about not including duplicates of files, which explains why you're seeing the issue and your friend is now.
