diff --git a/src/bin/pg_waldump/t/001_basic.pl b/src/bin/pg_waldump/t/001_basic.pl
index 8bb8fa225f6..ce1f6aa30c0 100644
--- a/src/bin/pg_waldump/t/001_basic.pl
+++ b/src/bin/pg_waldump/t/001_basic.pl
@@ -11,6 +11,15 @@ use Test::More;
 use List::Util qw(shuffle);
 
 my $tar = $ENV{TAR};
+my @tar_c_flags;
+
+# By default, bsdtar archives sparse files in GNU tar's --format=posix --sparse
+# format, so pg_waldump can't find files that ZFS has decided to store with
+# holes.  Turn that off.
+if (system("$tar --no-read-sparse -c - /dev/null > /dev/null") == 0)
+{
+  push(@tar_c_flags, "--no-read-sparse");
+}
 
 program_help_ok('pg_waldump');
 program_version_ok('pg_waldump');
@@ -346,7 +355,7 @@ sub generate_archive
 	# move into the WAL directory before archiving files
 	my $cwd = getcwd;
 	chdir($directory) || die "chdir: $!";
-	command_ok([$tar, $compression_flags, $archive, @files]);
+	command_ok([$tar, @tar_c_flags, $compression_flags, $archive, @files]);
 	chdir($cwd) || die "chdir: $!";
 }