The pax option "globexthdr.mtime" does not yet accept a timestamp that contains fraction of seconds. It should accept it, and intelligently cut it to an integer of seconds.
Steps to reproduce: $ d=2018-02-20T15:04:42.020859855Z $ echo hello >test.txt $ touch -d "${d}" test.txt $ x="globexthdr.name=pax_global_header,exthdr.name=%d/PaxHeaders/%f" $ x="${x},delete=atime,delete=ctime" $ opt="${x},globexthdr.mtime={${d}},comment=hello" $ tar -c --format=pax --pax-option="$opt" -f test1.tar test.txt $ opt="${x},globexthdr.mtime={$(echo ${d}|sed 's/\.[0-9]*//')},comment=hello" $ tar -c --format=pax --pax-option="$opt" -f test2.tar test.txt The steps above should be deterministic and test1.tar and test2.tar should be bit-identical. Actual result: (tested on both 1.27.1-1ubuntu0.1 and 1.30) The first command produces error "tar: Time stamp is out of allowed range" and has pax_global_header in the current time.