tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz creates all .gz files

prophoto · 11-07-2006, 04:33 PM

I am attempting to untar a backup, and each file is is still compressed after I use:

tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz

There are over 1000 files in the tarball so unziping each one is out of the question. Help!

matthewg42 · 11-07-2006, 04:56 PM

Can you post the results of the following command:

Code:

tar ztvf foo.tar.gz |head -n 20

prophoto · 11-07-2006, 08:24 PM

[root@sb subdomains]# tar ztvf foo.tar.gz |head -n 20
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2006-10-19 01:21:47 gallery/
drwxr-x--- vtiphoto/psaserv 0 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/
drwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 0 2006-03-31 02:25:37 gallery/httpsdocs/img/
drwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 0 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 576 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_asp_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 1298 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_php_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 1382 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_python_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 1342 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_ssi_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 425 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 938 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_perl_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 414 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_bg-disabled.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 1551 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_cgi_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 812 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_ok_bg.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 1182 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/glyph/btn_coldfusion_bg.gif.gz
drwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 0 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/icons/
drwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 0 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/icons/tabs/
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 1214 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/icons/tabs/right_on.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 296 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/icons/tabs/left.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 174 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/icons/tabs/left_over.gif.gz
-rwxr-xr-x vtiphoto/psacln 209 2006-10-12 10:56:14 gallery/httpsdocs/img/icons/tabs/left_on.gif.gz
[root@sb subdomains]#

trickykid · 11-07-2006, 08:38 PM

If it unzips each into a new directory, just cd into that directory and do for loop like:

Code:

for FILE in `ls`
   do
     tar xzvf $FILE
done

prophoto · 11-07-2006, 08:57 PM

...There are also many directories, I think my estimate of the number of files is low....

konsolebox · 11-07-2006, 09:06 PM

What files are you trying to untar? Or are you trying to uncompress the backup files one by one?

trickykid · 11-07-2006, 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prophoto

...There are also many directories, I think my estimate of the number of files is low....

Then do a find on them and -exec tar -xzvf or pipe to xargs to untar them.

prophoto · 11-07-2006, 10:01 PM

trickykid:

I'd love to! Can you help out the n00b and and give me step by step?

trickykid · 11-08-2006, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prophoto

trickykid:

I'd love to! Can you help out the n00b and and give me step by step?

1. cd into the directory where all the tar.gz files are located.
2. Run:

find . -type f -name *.tar.gz -exec tar xzvf {} \;

That should find all the tar.gz including those in subdirectories and unzip them all.

matthewg42 · 11-08-2006, 03:46 AM

First, de-tar the file:

Code:

tar zxvf foo.tar.gz

...now you have all these .gz files we have to gunzip them. This method will recurse into sub-directories, and will work even if the file/directory names include spaces and other weird characters. It also prints verbose information about what it is doing, which is nice if there is a really large amount of work to do because you can see that it's still working even if it takes a while:

Code:

find . -type f -iname \*.gz -print0 |xargs -0 gunzip -v

If you have multiple processors, you can use the -P *max-procs* option to xargs to run multiple instances of gunzip in parallel. There's no point if you only have one CPU (in fact it'll probably run slower). You should also leave some CPU for IO work. So if you have 4 CPUs, try:

Code:

find . -type f -iname \*.gz -print0 |xargs -0 -P 3 gunzip -v

...which will tun 3 parallel gunzip's together, leaving one CPU for IO and other work. Of course, this is only really going to be noticeable if the amount of gunzipping is very large...

prophoto · 11-08-2006, 09:40 AM

I'll try it now and let you know....Thanx!

prophoto · 11-09-2006, 06:27 PM

Wow....worked like a charm...THANX!