Here's the problem:

- I need a file from a compressed archive on a tape
- I don't have enough space to hold the uncompressed archive on the hard disk
- I barely have enough space to hold the compressed archive

So, I need to extract the file from the compressed archive on the tape.

It was compressed and archived with Star.

so, can I:

star -xz --file=archive.star.gz /dev/st0/file_to_be_restored?

or do I use Tar?

failing this, can I copy the compressed archive to disk then extract from there?

My eyes bled trying to find any clue on the web. I'm thinking this is 'dead easy' but for the life of me, I can't figure it out. The man for Star is 50,000,000 novels long.

Probably:

tar zxvf /dev/st0 <file name>