@yifanlu: compiling kindletool on a recent Linux (Ubuntu 11.10) got things going even worse. Even after "patching" the file with my (admittedly hacky) argc "change" that worked with getopt issues on Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 11.10 is simply segfaulting somewhere else (presumably in libtar). strace doesn't reveal anything sensible, except for, well, a segfault. Could you please look into that? (instructions: just try to build and run kindletool on Ubuntu 11.10 using the standard development packages, as outlined in th Wiki). I'm totally clueless