On my system (SunOS) tar doesn't handle pipes properly. You may just need to
recreate your pipe files in grass's dev directory with the mknod command:
mknod fifo.0a p
mknod fifo.0b p
mknod fifo.1a p
mknod fifo.1b p
mknod fifo.2a p
mknod fifo.2b p
.
.
.
etc.
chmod 666 fifo.*
Peter Strong -- National Park Service -- @cerl.cecer.army.mil:nps!peter