Hi,

I've downloaded a .tar.gz file to my external MMC and was wondering how I can unpack it to the same or even another directory.

Been searching for the right command to use in XTerm, but it's proving a bit fruitless.

If my file is called XYZ.tar.gz, what should I be typing in XTerm ?

TIA

HWSRN

"tar zxvf XYZ.tar.gz" should do the trick.

I use gunzip filename.tar.gz and then tar -xvf filename.tar

I'm sure there's you can gunzip w/ the tar command but don't know the flag offhand.

Read more @ someplace like
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?tar
(google search = tar man page)

Great.
Couple of questions.

- Do I need to change directory first or anything ?

- And does that command create its own directory within the existing one ?

- Will I be able to view the contents in File Manager ?


Thanks again.

The tar command will always extract the files into the current directory. Usually people create tar files such that all the files are in a top-level folder, and if your file is like that it will simply create a single folder. To check this do "tar ztvf XYZ.tar.gz" and you will get a list of all the files in the tarfile. If they are all in a single folder it should be obvious, otherwise create a new directory, change into it, and then do the extract.

Before you unpack the compressed tar file you will probably want to check its content (then you'll quickly see if you want to create a subdirectory first and cd there before you unpack).

Simply use 't' instead of 'x' to list the content: tar tvf file.tar.gz

tar's "-C" flag will allow you to untar into a different directory. Technically, it forces tar to "change to directory DIR" before performing the untar (hence the "-C" name), which means it won't create the directory if it doesn't already exist. For example, to untar MyPackage.tar.gz into /tmp:

tar zxf MyPackage.tar.gz -C /tmp