UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I created a relative backup of my home directory using tar into a file named backup.tar.
No problem there.
I checked it out using the table of contents command to list the contents of the backup.tar file, and there is no problem there either.
But, when I tried restoring backup.tar into a directory that I created called tar-restore, I am getting the following error:

$ cd tar-restore
$ tar -xvf backup.tar
tar: backup.tar: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Now, it's saying that backup.tar doesn't exist, but it does! Can someone please explain what the problem is?

Thank you

Notice that you did a "cd tar-restore". At this point "tar xvf backup.tar" tells tar to look in tar-restore. If backup.tar is in tar-restore's parent directory, use "tar xvf ../backup.tar".

Or "tar -xvf ../backup.tar". tar is an odd program that was written before the - convention was established. It works both ways.

Thank you!