UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I would like to extract the files from an archive which I have copied from a different server which has different file structures to my server.

When I do a tar xvf archive_name, I get the error saying the file or directory cannot be found. How do I specify a desginated directory to hold the files being extracted.

Thanks in advance.

John

To extract to a specific directory (on Linux) try

tar xzf archive.tar.gz -C somedir/

somedir must exist.

Thanks cbkihong,

I tried this:

tar xzf CDB20030623 -C /u06/keyforce/master/hist/

and I got this (I don't think it recognises the z parameter):

Usage: tar -{c|r|t|u|x} [-BdFhilmopsvw]
[-Number] [-fFile]
[-bBlocks] [-S [Feet] [Feet @Density] [Blocksb]]
[-LInputList] [-NBlocks] [-C Directory] File ...

then I tried this:

tar xvf CDB20030623 -C /u06/keyforce/master/hist/

No errors, but also no output either.

Thanks.

Is your file b/gzipped? If not, i.e. just tar'red your command should work. Otherwise you need to gunzip it first, say

zcat gzipped_tar_file | tar xf - -C somedir/

Thanks cbkihong,

The file is not zipped. However, I have been able to work around the problem by creating a file link to the "missing directory".

Thanks again for helping.

John