We currently use the python tarfile module to produce the tarfiles for the server build. Currently, we just reflect whatever the real filesystem permissions were on disk at the time the tarfile was created. This has lead to some surprises at various times. The tarfile module provides a facility by which we can explicitly set the uid, guid, and permissions bits on the files to be whatever we would like them to be, without regard for what they might happen to have on disk. We should apply this technique to ensure that our tarfiles have consistent contents.