I'm quite interested to find out /where/ exactly the problem occurs...
from reading your code, i'd expect things to break in the $fh->open call in Archive::Tar::_get_handle() -- which should log an error.

The fact it doesn't would lead me to believe that the open call returns true, but the filehandle isn't actually opened, which seems really bizarre.

Please mail me at kaneatcpan.org and we'll try to figure out what goes wrong here :)

--Kane