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01-24-2006, 11:12 PM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Jun 2001
Distribution: Fedora 22
Posts: 371
Rep:
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How do I extract only part of a tarball?
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!
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01-25-2006, 12:00 AM
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#2
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Nov 2005
Location: Annapolis, MD
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 17,809
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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)
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01-25-2006, 12:04 AM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 781
Rep: 
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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: Hope it helps.
Quote:
Does it really take long to untar 70GB?
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Whit that file, it can take some time.
Boby
Last edited by Boby; 01-25-2006 at 12:12 AM.
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01-25-2006, 03:58 AM
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#4
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Senior Member
Registered: Jun 2004
Location: Spain
Distribution: FC5
Posts: 1,993
Rep:
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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.
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01-25-2006, 09:43 AM
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#5
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Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2005
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Red Hat, Fedora
Posts: 1,515
Rep:
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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.
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01-25-2006, 03:44 PM
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#6
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Member
Registered: Jun 2001
Distribution: Fedora 22
Posts: 371
Original Poster
Rep:
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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.
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01-26-2006, 02:57 AM
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#7
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Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2005
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Red Hat, Fedora
Posts: 1,515
Rep:
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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...).
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