How to use tar?

huangyongqiang · 10-02-2007, 10:38 AM

hello, I'm a newbie on linux.I've just downloaded a file whose name ends with .tar.gz.
I've tried
tar zxvf filename
to extract it, but failed and received note which said no files or directories etc.
Can anyone help me how to solve the problem?

marco18 · 10-02-2007, 10:41 AM

If you typed as you wrote above, it is wrong. You forgot the slash before the mods. Type this:

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz

Hope this can help.

AlucardZero · 10-02-2007, 10:44 AM

on some tars you don't need the hyphen (like eg mine). huangyongqiang, if you could paste exactly what you typed and what you got back that would be great.

b0uncer · 10-02-2007, 10:51 AM

Code:

tar -xzvf filename.tar.gz

x for extraction (rather than archiving), z for gzip comperssion, v for verbose output and f for "filename" (the filename must be right after letter 'f', separated by a space).

Code:

tar -xjvf filename.tar.bzip2

The same, but now the .tar file is compressed with bzip2 (and not gzip), so use option 'j' instead of 'z' to tell tar which uncompression to use.

More:

Code:

man tar

It would also work if you first uncompressed, then untarred:
First code (from above) would be like this:

Code:

gunzip filename.tar.gz
tar -xvf filename.tar

So 'gunzip' first un-gzips the compressed archive (a .tar file comes out) and then tar untars that .tar file (note that there's no 'x' in the options anymore, because there's no need to gunzip it anymore!)

The second codepiece (from the top) would also work as

Code:

bunzip2 filename.tar.bz2
tar -xvf filename.tar

And so on..got it?