tlmgr update works now as it should, with the system's tar in FreeBSD (ver. 7). # tlmgr --version tlmgr revision 11536 (2008-12-06 12:46:06 +0100) tlmgr using installation: /usr/local/texlive/2008 TeX Live (http://tug.org/texlive) version 2008 texlive-20080903 Stratos