I've just discovered that tar 1.14 might actually be buggy. On many of
my linux boxes (clients and server) I have gnu tar 1.14 or 1.13.25

I'm understanding that I should instead download the latest tar
version (or 1.15) and install this in /usr/local/bin and use this
instead of the system's default in /usr/bin

That's what I did for my solaris boxes.

Now, amanda is configured and running just fine.

I will only have to redo the config using
--with-gnutar=/usr/local/bin/tar on my linux box and then re-make
amanda using the same parameter I used originally.

The question I have is:

When I will do the "make install" at the end, will it overwrite my
amanda configuration files and disklists etc ?

Thanks