tar extraction to current working directory. Is it possible

[Joe Profaizer]

I have a tar file I created. I want to extract it into my current working directory, because I don't have the same mount point on the system that I'm extracting it to.
Can I do this?

[Christopher McCray_1]

Hello,

When you extract the archive, it will dump in your current location when you issue the command, so yes.

Hope this helps

Chris

[Ken Hubnik_2]

It depends if the archive was create with absolute (full) path name or relative (./). Tar will lay done the archive in the current directory and depending on the above determines if full path or relative.

[Darrell Allen]

It's easy if you created the tar file with relative path names:
cd /directory_to_tar
tar cf output_tar_file files_or_dirs_to_tar

It's more difficult if you used absolute path names. You can use pax to extract this to a different directory.

Search the forums for "tar pax relative" and you'll find a number of threads. One is:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x38d6cf38d6bdd5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

Darrell

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Joe:

Yes, you can do this using 'pax' ['tar's cousin]. For example, to extract into 'newdir' where the 'tar' was made with absolute paths to 'olddir', do:

# /sbin/pax -r -p e -s '%^/%/newdir/%' -f /dev/rmt/0m

...the above also preserves file timestamps and permissions. See the 'pax' man pages for more information.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Darrell Allen]

Sorry, I see I didn't complete my relative path names example:

cd /directory_to_tar
tar cf output_tar_file files_or_dirs_to_tar

cd /directory_to_restore_into
tar xf tarfile_created_above

Darrell

[S.K. Chan · Accepted solution]

Yes you can do this with pax .. take for example the tar file "/tmp/test.tar" which has a full abosolute path backup of say /opt/appsA and you want to extract all files under /opt/appsA and put those in /tmp/myapps instead. You would ..
# mkdir /tmp/myapps
# cd /tmp/myapps
# pax -r -s ',^/opt/appsA/,,' -f /tmp/test.tar -t

[Elif Gius]

If the 'tar' archive was created with absolute paths, then you can't use 'tar' to extract to a different directory

Instead you have to use pax...

[John Palmer]

If you created the tar with absolute pathnames then you could create one or more symbolic links pointing to where you want the files to be extracted.

Example, tar files backed up as /a/b/c/d/*
On extracting system, you want to extract to /x/y/z and don't have a /a...
mkdir -p /a/b/c
cd /a/b/c
ln -s /x/y/z d
tar ...

You can then remove the temporary directories /a...

Regards,
John