How do I extract only part of a tarball?

punt · 01-24-2006, 10:12 PM

On a whim when backing up my harddrive before it crashed for good, I created a tarball of my /data directory: it is 70GB. It will take forever and a day to extract this, and I don't need ALL of the files -- just a few important ones.

I was wondering if there's a way to extract part of a tarball. I know the directory structure so it's just a matter of singling it out when using the tar command.

Thanks!

pixellany · 01-24-2006, 11:00 PM

Guess: an archive is an archive--you have to open it to see what's there.

What does "man tar" say?
Does it really take long to untar 70GB? (I've never tried it)

Boby · 01-24-2006, 11:04 PM

Tuff question

I was never thinking for this one, I have always used in this case the graphical archieve manager or ark.

But this is what I think you can do (exclude unvanted files)

Code:

tar -xvf your_archive.tar --exclude file_1.txt --exclude file_2.rpm

Took it from the manual:

Code:

man tar

Hope it helps.

Quote:

Does it really take long to untar 70GB?

Whit that file, it can take some time.

Boby

linmix · 01-25-2006, 02:58 AM

As Boby pointed out, if you use a graphical archive manager (Ark, file-roller) you can see what's inside the tarball and then select the files or directories you want to extract and also where to extract them.

timmeke · 01-25-2006, 08:43 AM

tar also supports selection of certain files, using wildcards to extract from archives. Just be careful for shell filename expansion.

Example:
tar -xvf your_tar_file 'dir1/*'
Notice the single quotes around the filename with wildcards, to prevent the shell from interpreting the * before passing it to tar.

punt · 01-25-2006, 02:44 PM

Thanks for the tips. I've never really grasped everything from the man pages; don't get the impression that I haven't looked there -- I just didn't know where to go from there and my syntax wasn't working out.

timmeke · 01-26-2006, 01:57 AM

For the GNU tar command, consider doing
tar --help
instead of
man tar.

The --help lists all the options, in a short, readable way and is thus handier then reading the entire man page (which can be lengthy, I know...).