Ihave a tar and when extracting it changes /root to a uid and gid of the source server which is bad especially for /root!
You can get around this by extracting as follows:
Add the -o switch which means "--no-same-owner"
tar -o -zxvf sometar.tar.gz........
It is as simple as using the "-k" option for:
-k, --keep-old-files don't replace existing files when extracting
--keep-newer-files don't replace existing files that are newer than
thei........