I am trying to extract an archive using tar xvzf, for installing an aureal sound driver. I keep getting a message "Cannont change ownership to uid 1000, gid 1000, operation not permitted." I'm sure this is easy to fix, but I can't figure out how to do it! I am really new to this! I got it to work a few installations ago,so this is really frustrating to me! I'm using Mandrake 7.2. Could someone out there help me?

I would guess that the tarfile was created with user 1000 and group 1000. When you try to extract the file the permissions on the directory are not allowing you to change the uid or gid to 1000. I tried to recreate the error, but I was unsuccessful at getting the same error message. I only got permission denied error. So I may be wrong.

You should check to see what user on your machine is 1000. Check the permissions on the directory that you are extracting to. Also are you running as root? Try to extract the file as a normal user in some temporary direcoty. When a regular user extracts tarfiles it will not attempt to chown the files being extracted.

Let me know

Gary

Thanks! It works! I think it is so cool how everyone helps each other here... You were right, it has something to do with the permissions on the dirictory I was trying to extract into. I don't really understand it yet, but I have sound now, so I'm encouraged to keep going with my changeover to Linux! One more question... can I delete the temporary files?

It's difficult to say without knowing how the install worked. I'd suggest renaming the directory to something else then reboot and make sure everything works; if so then delete away; if not then restore the directory name.

Gary