UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

im trying to tar files into a .tgz file into an absolute pathname somewhere else on the disk... this part i can accomplish with a command of this nature

tar czfv $TRASH/test.tgz /home/username/class/test

the problem is, when i unzip the file it creates in my %TRASH directory (%TRASH being the value of the absolute path to my directory) it creates a directory /home/username/class and puts test in that directory. what i want it to do, is put it back into the /home/username/class directory that already exists. if anyone could help me with this problem that would be great.

-C tells it to chdir first. Then you just tell it to archive the current directory, ..

Code:

tar -C /home/username/class/test -czvf $TRASH/test.gz .

i try using that line and i get this error


tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive


the file "test" does exist in that directory, and %TRASH exists in my file system... any ideas?

You forgot to put the "." on the end. It still expects to be given a folder to archive, even with -C.

awesome, now it compresses it right, but when i extract it, the file still goes to whatever directory that im in... i want it to go back to the directory that it came from. anyway to do that?

Oh, you want the tar to contain the absolute path? And extract to the same absolute path?

Easy:

Code:

# create tarball.  Will contain files like absolute/path/to/folder/whatever
tar -zcpf file.tar.gz /absolute/path/to/folder

# extract.  Will chdir to /, then extract absolute/path/to/folder
tar -C / -zvxf file.tar.gz

great! thats exactly what i wanted thanks so much for your help!