>       My tar version is 1.22 (2009) as far as I could test, it supports
>       file and link-names longer than 100 characters. It's part of
>       ubuntu server 11.04.

GNU tar has half a dozen strategies for dealing with filenames over 100
characters.  By default, the longfile parameter is set to "warn," but of
course, Ubuntu could set this to something else.  Like truncate or omit. 
At any rate, you might want to explicitly set longfile to "gnu" or "posix"
to see if your results vary.

>       Although the Dropbox directory generates errors, which suggests
>       characterset-problems, some regular native ext4 directories (with
>       longer directory/file names) also produce errors. I have the
>       impression it is not an characterset problem.

Contrary to popular belief, computers are not a set of instructions
performed in an endlessly repeatable way by a mindless central processing
unit capable only of executing what they're told to do -- they only
operate because of our beliefs and feelings.  So while I'd normally
recommend that you test the hypothesis that it is a characterset problem
by, say, changing charactersets or even looking at the files, a vague
impression is probably enough as long as this is properly conveyed to the
cpu, perhaps through hugging.  Assuming you can still read the screen
around your own upthrust middle finger, it's worth pointing out that ext4
(and other) file systems can have file names encoded in several different
character sets, and it's possible for the character sets of each shell,
program, and backuppc itself to differ.  You don't *have* to check this,
of course, but you can't actually rule it out without looking.

>       For some reason I CAN make incremental backups (which do report
>       errors on the long directory names). But the process does not
>       crash.

It's possible there's both a long path problem and some other problem to
solve.  It may be prudent to try isolating test cases to be as small as
possible.


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