Hi!
Does anyone know why the following command isn't working : tar -tj myarchive.tar.bz2 ???

the -t option is for list and the -j option is for filter through bzip2 ...

but when I type this command, nothing seems to happen...

You need an f as in "file" in there. So tar -tjf myarchive.tar.bz2 should work. Hope this helps.

thx very much, that worked...
I have a little other question: is it possible to extract just a few files from the archive?
It is an archive of many gigs and I just need a few files from it...

The easiest way to do this is with a front-end, something like File Roller. If this isn't an option you could do something like 'tar -xfvj foo.tar.bz2 fileinarchive.c anotherfile.c" if you want to extract fileinarchive.c and anotherfile.c from foo.tar.bz2. You can also use wild-cards like 'tar -xfvj foo.tar.bz2 *.c'

no, it isn't really a good alternative, because my maschine is very slow and space is not much...
I tried your command and like this:

tar -xfvj SystemBackup.tar.bz2 usr/local/var/htdig

where usr/local/var/htdig is my directory, I want to extract..

I got following error:

tar: vj: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

What went wrong? I tried also with a "/" at the beginning of my path.

ok, so far I checked this out, the error does not apear anymore when I pu the f as last argument.

But if I use this command, can't I specify a destination dir?
Is it overwriting my original-files??

Oh yeah sorry, guess I typed it out of order. And yes it does just extract it to the working directory. I guess if you want it to extract to another directory just go to that directory and run tar from there. So you could do 'tar -xvjf /path/to/tar/foo.tar.bz2 /directory/in/tar' in the directory you want to extract to.

I find the command line syntax to tar all a bit confusing/difficult to remember, and found a small package called bloat instead.

This will extract all common archives simply by typing Its early days, but it hasn't failed yet...

It can be easily installed via urpmi or from http://bloat.sourceforge.net/ . The only dependancy is bc

Just a quick clarification:
Bloat, at very basic, depends on Perl, cat, and file. Of course, if you want it to be useful, you'll need some extractors - see http://bloat.sourceforge.net/requirements.php for details. "bloat --check" will tell you what you don't have.

It's been quite a few months since the release of Bloat 1.4; 1.5 should be out soon, I'm basically waiting on a couple of translations. There's been a few bug fixes, etc, since 1.4. If you're happy with using CVS, it tends to be fairly stable. I don't intentionally commit broken code. But if you feel a bit iffy using the CVS version, just install 1.4 and wait a bit for 1.5 to come out.

See previous post...

I should have said that for my -bog standard - mandrake 10.1C install the only uninstalled dependancy was bc.

I'm still getting away from the Windoze - 'you will be given what we insist you have' mentaility. One day soon I'll begin to remember that 'not all Linux installations are created equal: just better.'

Thanks for clarifying Dave2. And thanks for bloat...

Apologies for any confusion caused..........

Glad you find bloat useful

I'm wondering where the bc dependency is coming from - I'm pretty sure my RPMs don't have it in their deps (it depends on /usr/bin/perl, /usr/bin/env, and that's it for the RPM), and bc isn't used by bloat itself anywhere.

(Going offtopic a bit, so might want to take it into PMs or e-mail if it's more than one reply.)

God I'm an idiot.

bc must have been the dependency for something else I installed

I have a major case of 'oeuf-sur-le visage' as the French might say

I do reserve the right to continue to ask stupid questions but will refrain from giving stupid 'answers'' until I have at least half a clue what I'm talking about. It could be sometime.

Apologies (again) to all.

Hi everybody again...
I was running now the command, but it didn't stop for nearly an hour now...
when I top, I see the bzip2 and tar processes working, but what are they doing? I just tried to extract some kilobytes of data...
My backup-file is about 6 gigs...anybody knows, what tar is doing and why it isn't stopping?
Does it need so long to search through the archive? How can I display the progress?
The same happens, if I run bloat.... It seems to do something, but I don't see any progress...

Please help, it's really an important backup I have to recover...
thx

It needs to uncompress the whole bzip2 file before it can actually see what's in the tar archive, so it taking a long time is unavoidable.