tarballs barbells & tarpits?
I wanted to run a system for the blind end user called Linux Speaks . The ISO image boots and some functions work but others don't. There are two other files at the same site described as Installers, one tar.gz and the other tar.bz2. How to I go about unpacking and installing them. Is there anyway for me to tell what they will do before running them? What's the difference between a gz and bz2 file? Thanks.
Scott |
The difference between .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 is that different compression has been applied (the former has been compressed using gzip, while the latter has been compressed using bzip2). You can unpack them with "tar xvf filename". This should work, but if tar complains, specify 'z' for the .tar.gz file or 'j' for the .tar.bz2 (e.g. tar xzvf foo.tar.gz). Following this, you'll need to see which files/directories have been unpacked and then look for a README file for further instructions.
|
gz refers to a gzipped file and bz is for bzipped ones. I believe bzip compresses files slightly better than gzip.
Both of these work on one file at a time, so the 'tar' command is used to package a bunch of files into a single file, after which they are zipped. You can extract the package using the command tar jxvf filename.tar.bz2 or tar zxvf filename.tar.gz. In newer versions of tar, the zipped type is automatically detected, so you could just do a tar xvf filename.tar.something. This will only unpack the archive, it shouldn't install it anywhere. |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:40 PM. |