*.tar.bz2.tar
 

i am trying to download stage3 of gentoo for pentium 4. i tried installing gentoo using stage 3 but the stage3 file was corrupt. i downloaded it off the net but it seems to be zipped. i want i stage3 file that isnt zipped. to be exact the file that i downloaded is
stage3-pentium4-2004.3.tar.bz2.tar
i need this one:
stage3-pentium4-2004.3.tar.bz2
because ill try to burn the cd again with the latter file.
any help would be good.

.tar.bz2.tar would seem to me to be something that's first packaged with tar (into a single .tar -file), then compressed with bzip2 to a .tar.bz2 file and then packaged again to a .tar.bz2.tar -file, which seems odd, since tarring it twice is no use, as far as I know :P

anyway, if it's like that, simply

and you should get the .tar.bz2 -version.

Putting a .tar.bz2 file inside a .tar file willl only ever make the file larger. So it's unlikely to be the right filename.

Did you save the file with Microsoft Internet Explorer? It usually adds a .tar extension to .tar.bz2 files because it looks at their “archive/tar” MIME type and thinks they are tarballs, and then “corrects” the extension. Check the filename on the URL, and if it's a .tar.bz2, then just rename the file.

Under *NIX, There's a utility called “file” that will tell you what the actual type of the file is, regardless of it's contents:Aside: A .tar file isn't “zipped” per se; ZIP is an archive format that compresses each file, then adds it to a single archive file (with an uncompressed manifest). A tarball (.tar.bz2) file is a format that adds each file to an uncompressed archive, then compresses the entire file (which is much more efficient, as the manifest is compressed, and the compression routine can eliminate duplication between different files).

If it really is inside a second tarball, then you'll need to untar the file with to recover the original file.