Oh yea, I actually made the same mistake as someone in the other thread there. Try running this when re-creating the tar archive:
cd /tmp/qla
tar -cf scsi_qla.tar *
vmtar -c scsi_qla.tar -o scsi_qla
The original "./*" should have been responsible for this issue.
Listing the files inside the archive should now look like this:
# cat scsi_qla.tar | tar tv
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 etc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 etc/vmware/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 etc/vmware/driver.map.d/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 592 2013-01-11 16:31:53 etc/vmware/driver.map.d/qla2xxx.map
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/lib/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/lib/vmware/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 1644648 2012-02-08 06:54:21 usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/qla2xxx
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/share/hwdata/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 usr/share/hwdata/driver.pciids.d/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 740 2012-02-08 06:54:21 usr/share/hwdata/driver.pciids.d/qla2xxx.ids
They looked like that with the preceding dot and slash before:
# cat scsi_qla.tar | tar tv
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./etc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./etc/vmware/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./etc/vmware/driver.map.d/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 592 2013-01-11 16:31:53 ./etc/vmware/driver.map.d/qla2xxx.map
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/lib/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/lib/vmware/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 1644648 2012-02-08 06:54:21 ./usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/qla2xxx
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/share/hwdata/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2013-01-11 16:31:13 ./usr/share/hwdata/driver.pciids.d/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 740 2012-02-08 06:54:21 ./usr/share/hwdata/driver.pciids.d/qla2xxx.ids