Re: another 9.2 upgrade problem: the answer

So you seem to have had *exactly* the same situation as me (base.tgz 
extracted with / mounted RO), run into *exactly* the same problem as me 
(/rescue/tar calling /usr/bin/gzip with the default PATH), and most probably 
(as people had suggested to me on tech-userlevel@) running tar xz with 
PATH=/rescue would have solverd the issue (surely, 
/bin/gzcat base.tgz >base.tar would have worked, as it woked for me).