How do I install a *.tar file

[Matt Rieman]

We recently purchased a Savin Laser Printer, and downloaded the install software for UNIX 10.20 from their site. The file is in *.tar format. How do we install the file? We have an HP9000 K460 Server running HP-UNIX 10.20.

Thanks

[Helen French · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Two ways:

1) Start 'swinstall' -> Select 'local directory' in the target window -> enter the complete path of the tar file in the source tab (eg: /tmp/file1.tar)-> mark for install -> install

2) Untar the file first (tar -xvf /tmp/file1.tar) -> start swinstall -> select the target directory/file -> mark for install -> install

See man swinstall for more details.

HTH,
Shiju

[John Payne_2]

To untar the file, do a 'tar -xvf filename.tar' This will unpackage the tar file. Then there should be a README (or similar file) that was unpackaged which has the install instructions. If they are worth their salt, the distribution is in a .depot format which you can swinstall. Barring that, you may be able to point the swinstall right at the filename.tar tarball and install from the tar file. (Untarring the distribution will not get rid of the *.tar file, and you can try both methods...

Hope it helps

John

[John Strang]

Hi Matt,

Assuming the file is in a directory on your HP server, first thing I would do would be to check the contents by typing

tar tvf filename
where the flags mean
t = list contents of file
v = verbose
f = specifies file to use

This will show whether the files in the *.tar file have relative or absolute pathnames. Next step would be to extract files from the *.tar file - type

tar xvf filename
where x = extract

Type
man tar
for more help with the tar command.

HTH,

John