tar or gtar that is the question

so i decided i'd tar up a directory and gzip it on the fly over ssh between two sun boxes.
why?  because my filesystem is small.  like painfully small. like you put stuff in tmp and you cause a little panic small.
oh, and i need a bizarre version of sun studio 11. install and find patches.  no thanks.

rude-solbox$ tar -c /opt/sunstudio11 | gzip -2 | ssh nice-solbox "cat > /opt/sunstudio11.tar.gz"

so i go to nice-solbox, start doing the usual tar xvfz junk and the following scrolls by:

@LongLink: typeflag 'L' not recognized, converting to regular file

that means trouble.

so, maybe using the gnu version of tar, gtar is in order.   let's take a look here:
/usr/sfw/bin/gtar or /opt/sfw/bin/gtar

yep.

re-run: 
rude-solbox$ gtar -c /opt/sunstudio11 | gzip -2 | ssh nice-solbox "cat > /opt/sunstudio11.tar.gz"

then gtar away.  coolness.