This works for me as expected on Solaris using Archive::Tar version 0.22. The only odd thing is that the last file name sometimes does not show when I run GNU tar from the command line. But when I extract using either GNU tar or Archive::Tar, symlinks come out named as they were put in and linked to whatever they were linked to when they went in, and no files are missing. The only thing is, if I unpack in a directory where the files linked to do not exist, I get symlinks that point to nothing -- but that's the same behavior as GNU tar. I put debug in and it's doing what I'd expect when it finds symlinks.

Maybe upgrade for starters and post some more complete code samples if you still have problems?