Probably a stupid question...

I have downloaded the gkrellm skins tarball from here and have managed to "untar" them to /usr/share/gkrellm/themes

This has given me the directory of /usr/share/gkrellm/themes/GKrellM-skins. In this directory, I have all the currently available skins in the above shown as <name>.tar.gz

So do I have to untar each one individually, then copy it to the main "themes" directory, or is there a command to untar the lot and move them back into the main themes directory "en masse" ????

regards

John

tar xzf *.tar.gz
mv *.tar.gz somedir

* is your friend.

In addition to previous post: You can unpack all files at once by running something like this in your command prompt:

# for i in *.gz; do
> tar zxvf $i
> done

(press enter after 'do' and 'done').

Actually, I believe bulliver, that won't work... I for some reason couldn't do that before, and I think... Yeah, here's a link to where my problem first came about, and how to get around it:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=23802

Cool

You will have to forgive my stupidity Chad,

Having checked out the link, and tried a few possible variations, I have since reread it about half a dozen times and don't understand what Mik is trying to say.

Could I be a pain and ask you to give me a "blow by blow" account of how to untar the file to the /usr/share/gkrellm/themes directory so I don't end up with another directory called /usr/share/gkrellm/themes/GKrellM-skins which is full of individual skins still in the tar.gz format.

At the moment, I have deleted all the stuff that I downloaded relating to this and am having problems removing my head from my arse, hence not being able to understand what Mik was telling you in the first place.

Your absolutely right, it didn't work, coulda sworn I've done that before.



pesho_p's suggestion however, worked beautifully, give it a try bigjohn...

No worries bigjohn Here's a play by play:

Download the tarball(s) to /home/tarballs/skins make sure this directory only has the tarballs for the Gkrellm Skins. So if you look at it there should be at least 10 (just a number I am using for clarification, not a set in stone quantity) or more tar.gz files, all of them only gkrellm skin tarballs. So, type:
ls /home/tarballs/skins/*.tar.gz | xargs -n 1 tar xvzCf /usr/share/gkrellm/themes

Highlight, and paste that into the terminal, it will untar every file to the /usr/share/gkrellm/themes directory into it's own subfolder (which should be fine, this is how gkrellm wants them I believe)

Cool

What I don't follow Chad is that when I download the tarball from here even If I have made a new directory called tarballs/skins, the tarball ends up in my home directory so I move it to the tarball/skins directory and follow what you said and get this

[john@localhost john]$ ls /home/john/tarballs/skins/*.tar.gz | xargs -n 1 tar xvzCf /usr/share/gkrellm/themes
ls: /home/john/tarballs/skins/*.tar.gz: No such file or directory
tar: Old option `f' requires an argument.
Try `tar --help' for more information.
[john@localhost john]$

I got a bit further earlier, but all it would give me is the cant find directory or files "excuses"

so I deleted it all and started again, using your wording verbatim and got the above bash response.

I appreciate you must be banging your head against your monitor shouting "thick c**t" but as I can't even install "parted or guarddog" from the cover disc from this months linuxformat because it isn't in rpm format, you probably get the picture of my stupidity level!!!


Right, so I go to http://www.muhri.net and get the GKrellM-Skins.tar.gz file.

This will end up in my home directory, so do I need to create a new directory, say called tarball for example, or because the GKrellM-Skins file is an archive, do I need to untar it to get it so that all the tar.gz files for each of the skins are then in the "tarball" directory?

Because even if I make the new directory, I tell it to be say tarball/skins and when I look at it in konquerer it tells me that for some reason unbeknownst to me, that it is called /home/john/tarball%252kins or something like that

Am I stuck in moron mode 1 alpha and missing something???

regards

John

Hi The one tarball needs to be extracted first. Go ahead and download that single tarball to that directory and extract it. It will create that second directory in there, that's fine, just cd into it:
cd Gkrellm-Skins
And then run that line up there.

Cool

Yes sir

Cool

Maybe if I better explain the command you can see what is needed to execute it Here's a breakdown for you:

ls /home/john/tarballs/skins/*.tar.gz | xargs -n 1 tar xvzCf /usr/share/gkrellm/themes

Ok, the first part:
ls
This lists files in any given directory. You are listing the files in /home/john/tarballs, and specifically limiting your listing to just the tar.gz files. You are then piping ( | ) this to the next command. The pipe tells the next command to take the input from the previous command and apply it to it's output (this is a part of confusion alot of the time). It basically takes the result of the list of tarballs and feeds that list to:
xargs. What xargs does is tell tar to take these files 1 at a time ( -n 1). And finally tar xvzCf untars the files to that specific directory. The C option is the one needed when specifying a directory, otherwise tar will just place the files in the same directory as the original tarballs.

HTH John

Cool

So, I have got the directory called /home/john/tarball

I have moved the download there

I have untar'd it and got a file called /home/john/tarball/GKrellM-skins

I then cd into it and type ls /home/john/tarball/GKrellM-skins/*.tar.gz | xargs -n 1 tar xvzCf /usr/share/gkrellm/themes

and then all I'm getting is this

XenoSilvereX/bg_grid.png tar: XenoSilvereX/bg_grid.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/bg_panel.png tar: XenoSilvereX/bg_panel.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/bg_meter.png tar: XenoSilvereX/bg_meter.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/swap/ tar: XenoSilvereX/swap: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/swap/bg_panel.png tar: XenoSilvereX/swap/bg_panel.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/swap/krell.png tar: XenoSilvereX/swap/krell.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/net/ tar: XenoSilvereX/net: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/net/decal_net_leds.png tar: XenoSilvereX/net/decal_net_leds.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/apm/ tar: XenoSilvereX/apm: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/apm/krell.png tar: XenoSilvereX/apm/krell.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/timer/ tar: XenoSilvereX/timer: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file XenoSilvereX/timer/decal_timer_button.png tar: XenoSilvereX/timer/decal_timer_button.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/krell_panel.png tar: XenoSilvereX/krell_panel.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/frame_top.png tar: XenoSilvereX/frame_top.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/frame_bottom.png tar: XenoSilvereX/frame_bottom.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/frame_right.png tar: XenoSilvereX/frame_right.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/frame_left.png tar: XenoSilvereX/frame_left.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/fs/ tar: XenoSilvereX/fs: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/fs/krell.png tar: XenoSilvereX/fs/krell.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/data_in_grid.png tar: XenoSilvereX/data_in_grid.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory XenoSilvereX/data_in.png tar: XenoSilvereX/data_in.png: Cannot open: No such file or directory tar: Unexpected EOF in archive tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now [john@localhost GKrellM-skins]$

and I've just quoted the last bit, I get so much of it, I am unable to scroll back to the top where I entered the command in the first place.

The only thing that I can think of is that the /home/john/tarball directory now has both the GKrellM-skins and the GKrellM-Skins.tar.gz in it.

Could the command be getting confused because of some sort of priority thing that it looks at the tar.gz file first and I end up with the crap above??? Hence should I delete the tar.gz version (yes, I'm now clutching at some rather fine straws!!!)

regards

John

Been gone all day John, sorry for the delay. The tarball:
http://www.muhri.net/gkrellm/GKrellM-Skins.tar.gz
When untarred creates a subdirectory:
GKrellM-skins
cd GKrellM-skins
Then:
ls /home/john/tarballs/skins/*.tar.gz | xargs -n 1 tar xvzCf /usr/share/gkrellm/themes

BUT FIRST:
mkdir -p /usr/share/gkrellm/themes (and make sure you are root).

FYI, mine are actually located in:
/usr/local/share/gkrellm/themes
However, if this becomes a point of confusion for you, don't worry about it until you successfully complete the above 2 steps, we can fix this with a simple command if need be.

Cool

Thanks Chad,

perhaps Jeremy should instigate a little scheme whereby, the most helpful person at LQ gets a case of malt scotch or maybe good bourbon.

If this happened, I reckon that you would be inundated.

I did the mkdir -p etc etc thing like you said, and although I did the rest of the instructions as root, it went as smooth as a babies butt!

I didn't quite follow why you got me to do the mkdir -p thing as there was already a /usr/share/gkrellm/themes directory but yee F*****g haaaa!

Anyhow, what this is about, is that I was looking at the "post a screen shot" thread, and I thought that it might be a good one to have a go at, even if there are some hereabouts that think that that particular thread is getting on a bit. So I now have the KDE soup can wall paper with the gkrellm "NLog" theme going, so I suppose that the next thing will be to see if I can find a nice set of icons - hummmm!

By way of an update on other threads that we've spoken over, I think that I have settled on the idea of replacing my speedtouch usb adsl modem with an adsl router/modem from Solwise called an SAR110 - I'm just waiting to hear from one of the chaps from the local LUG who seems to have one "spare" (he is one of a few members who seem to be an IT professional, so that might explain why he has one "spare" though it wouldn't matter as I will get one from Solwise if necessary). Then it'll be a case of unplug the modem, throw an NIC in the pc, and plug it up/configure. If you look here you can get an idea of what it's like, it has a good write up at the adslguide and the screenies of the web based set up seem that even I should be able to configure it.

Even the bit about firewalls seems to be quite user friendly, and god forbid that mandrakesoft never recover from "chapter 11" (well the french equivalent anyway) then at least I will be better placed to just install something else over the top (debian based seems quite a good idea as the apt-get facility sounds far superior to rpm's - though the 99$ version of Xandros seems quite a good idea as well because I should be able to use the crossover plugin to play my "jellyfish backgammon" and use my office 2000 - which would even satisfy my Clare and then I would never have to boot back into wind0w$ - the ultimate goal).

Right, enough waffle matey, oh before I go and sort out dinner (fishermans pie with steamed brocolli) have you had your promotion exam results through yet???

regards and many thanks

John

Thanks John. Glad you got your Skins going. The mkdir -p simply was to ensure all directories were created. The -p attached to the command loosely means "Make all the directories above this one, so that this one can exist" because if /usr/share/gkrellm didn't exist, then you cannot create /usr/share/gkrellm/Skins (at least not without adding the -p to the command).

As for the scotch, honestly I get all the thanks I need from those I help, and just from being able to help at all. Although, I am sure I wouldn't turn down a night out at the pub with a few of you guys on here!

Took a glance over the hardware you are looking into, looks very nice! I am sure that'll be a huge relief for you to no longer have to mess with firewalls, and the usb-speedtouch scripts et al. Using Crossover definitely is a decent way to go IMO. I think it's bringing the best of both worlds together into one stable OS. The $99 cover is a bit steep to me, however, I don't know what Crossover runs alone these days, so it may be worth it; especially if there is also some support included with that! I believe apt-get will work wonders for you, and I am glad you are open to trying it out. And I am sure your wife will be super stoked to not have to boot back and forth between OSes!

Thanks for remembering my advancement exam, unfortunately yes, they came out and I didn't make it. It wasn't due to poor test scores though, but rather the rating from my superiors on my porformance and such (known here as an "eval"). It wasn't as high as it could have been, and it held quite a bit of weight on the overall advancement scores. I figure this upcoming exam (Scheduled for March) I should do better on, however we've switched crews around quite a bit lately (it's obvious why ) and so I don't know exactly how well I will get rated this time either. Only time will tell, and then I will too

Take care John, and I'll see you around.

Cool