Hi there, if i am in /opt and i want to extract /data/package.tar to /usr, how do I do it...How can I extract to a directoory that im not currently in ???

eg ....(I thought this would work but it doesnt)

#cd /opt
# tar xvf /data/package.tar /usr

cheers

Reading through the man page for tar, I don't think you can do this. If you want to extract the files from a tarfile "foo.tar", you would simply go to the directory that you want to use as a starting point and then extract it from there. For instance, if I have a tarfile named "foo.tar" in my home directory "/home/bar", and I want to extract that tar file into /opt, I would do the following:

# cd /opt
# tar xvf /home/bar/foo.tar

When you tried to do "tar xvf /data/package.tar /usr", as far as tar was concerned what you were asking to do was extract the file "/usr" from the tarfile package.tar. This may or may not have worked, depending on what was actually in the package.tar file.

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I tried this:
but it didn't work for me, I got an error about being unable to execute a remote shell.

This did work though, and might be more portable:

Thanks, the -C modifier worked perfectly to extract files to a different directory other than the current one!