Hi--
This is probably easy for you old pros, but could not find enough in the man pages to figure it out.
1. How can I extract specific files and directories from a tarball? What is the exact command line command I need to enter, please?
2. Is there any way to speed up the process with a huge .tgz file?
3. If I want to restore all the files and all the rights and dates and times, do I need to be logged into X as root, or can I do it as a normal user?
My secondary HDD failed yesterday. My backups are stored in .tgz files. After replacing the drive, I used Red Hat 9.0's File Roller to get many of the files I need.
Those were from a tarball that was 1.5 gigs. The one I am having difficulty with is one that is 13 gigs. File Roller takes about 45 minutes to read the file so I can tell it what to grab. Then I started the extraction last night at 10:20 pm and sat up all night with it (I had other files I needed to extract as soon as that was done, and a deadline to meet); it still was not done at 5:20 am this morning when I stopped it to get at least enough of the other files to meet my deadline.
In any event, I want to pull out a couple of directories, let's call them /doug2 and /doug3, and a couple of files, /foobar/sub1/file1, and /foobar/sub2/file2.
I tried this (if I remember straight after this all-nighter!

):
tar -xvf /backups/weekly.tgz doug2
and it reported that there was no such directory found in that .tgz file.
I tried /doug2 and same result. Yet File Roller displayed /doug2. So I must be doing something wrong. What's the key wording here, please?
So, to speed the process, would it make sense for me to unzip the file first and then only untar the directory I want? Will it even be visible once it is unzipped? Do something else? This file only took about 45 minutes to create; why should it take 7 1/2 hours + to extract?