Thread: How do I uncompress a bz2 file?
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Rob1n is offline Rob1n
2010-05-14 , 08:32
Posts: 3,617 | Thanked: 2,412 times | Joined on Nov 2009 @ Cambridge, UK
#10
Originally Posted by yokeloonlo View Post
Hi, I am new here using N900. Just got my device. I am not familiar with Linux terminology (well, I am mot a person familiar with programming languages as well, I am just typical phone user). Thus looking at some of the posts with all the terminologies really get my head spinning some times. But I am trying to learn..

Can I know in step by step how to extract the bz2 file in X terminal. I tried to follow something what qole wrote:

cd /location/to/untar
gtar xjvf /path/to/tarball.tar.bz2

but I totally don't understand the above command, such as to/untar, and what is gtar and xjvf?

Is the tarball.tar.bz2 necessary?

Sorry, it may sound stupid to the expert, but appreciate if can help.

I tried this :
cd /MyDocs/

it went to the MyDocs directory. Now if my tar.bz2 file in this directory the file name is debian-squeeze-img.tar.bz2.

I downloaded this from my PC and copy to the N900 MyDocs folder.

Note : I already have the debian chroot, debian LXDE, DEB img install already in the menu (but without the image file, which I am trying to extract)

Please help
Thanks
Yoke
Okay, let's start from the top.

"cd /location/to/untar" just means to change to the directory you want to extract your file to - he's just used an example directory name that also explains what it's for.

"gtar" is the GNU tar application. You'll need to install the "tar-gnu" package to get this (this should have been done automatically when you installed the Debian chroot though). There's a separate "tar" program which is supplied as standard on the N900, as part of the base system, but this doesn't support all the options that the full GNU tar does.

"xjvf" are the flags you're passing to the GNU tar program. "x" indicates that you want to extract an archive, "j" means that it's bzip2 compressed, "v" sets verbose mode (so it shows you what's being extracted) and "f" says that you're specifying a filename to extract.

"/path/to/tarball.tar.bz2" is the full path and filename for the archive you want to extract. In your case this will be "/home/user/MyDocs/debian-squeeze-img.tar.bz2".
 

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