I am running Red Had 9. I am trying to run tar to extract a tar file. When I do, I get many messages saying "Cannot open: No such file or directory" I am running this command from the directory where the tar file is located:

tar zxvf jakarta-tomcat-4.1.29-LE-jdk14.tar.gz

Thank you in advance.

try using tar -xzfv tar_archive_name.tar.gz

You need the minus sign in there

The dash is optional. First thing would be to make sure that you are in the directory or giving the full path (check) and that the filename is spelled correctly. (?) Not found is odd, though. I might say you maybe downloaded it as root (or whatever) and are now trying to access it as user, but that should give a different error message. Next, I'd run 'file' on it in case it isn't really a tar.gz, but that should also give a different error. Same thing regarding whether you have tar and it's on your path - wrong message, but maybe.

I'm guessing it's a typo. Are you using tab-completion? Getting the case right? The file does show in an 'ls'? Strange.

I have made sure it is not a typo. I did, however, download it as root, then tried to extract it as another user. So, I deleted the file, then tried to cp it from the cdrom again as a different user. It said "permission denied". Is there a way to give that user the right permissions to do that?

What are the permissions of the file
ls -l <file_name>

Use the chmod command to allow read / write for all users. Need to be logged in as root.
chmod 777 <file_name>

Well I changed the permissions to 777 and still got the same errors.

it goes like this there are a user and group permissions on a object.. when you do ls -l you see:

r--rwxr-x bob root

The first three characters (r) give read access to bob
then the second three characters (rwx) give read, write, execute access to root
the last three characters (r-x) give access to all other users (and there is read, execute access)

they way to change those two users is to use the "chown" command and then change file permissions with chmod

chown gschrade <file>
chmod u+rwx <file>

This changes the file to look like this

rwxr--r-x gschrade root

and your file will work, suggest ya go online and search "chmod tutorial" to learn more bout this stuff

btw the chmod 777 is an old way of doing this, use the rwx way cuz its easier to understand

oops sry, the file should look like this after you change it:
rwxrwxr-x gschrade root

sry bout that

There are also permissions on the directories. What directory are you trying to extract it to?

I changed the permissions on the directory and that did the trick. Thank you very much!