tar not working

[Anand_30]

Hi,

I have ftped one tar file from one machine to another using binary mode. But when I tried to untar the file in the destination machine, I got the message:

tar: cannot open file

Can anyone tell me what is the reason for this message.

Thanks,
Andy

[Patrick Wallek]

What command did you use? Where is the file located? What are the permissions on the file?

The error indicates that tar either doesn't have permissions to open the file or can not see the file.

[Sunil Sharma_1]

Hi,


Is it working on source machine.

try ftp again.

tar -xvf

Sunil

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

Also try tar tvf on both machines. This will print out the names of the files contained in the tar file, and thus verify the tar file.
If that does work, your problem is probably that the file inside the tar file can not be created on your system...
If that doesn't work on the destination machine, but works on the source machine, the problem is with the FTP.
If it doesn't work on both machines, check what you wanted to tar. I am not sure what message tar gives if you tried to tar files over 2 Gb... tar's limit.

[Steven E. Protter]

Permissions: If the untar user can't write to the location the file is sitting this will give you an error, though in my experience you will get a slightly more meaningful error.

I just ran a test as a non-root user on a tar file owned by root in a directory the user did not have write permissions on. The error messag involved can not create warnings, so I don't think its straight permissions.

Based on this test, I would surmise that the ftp tranfser was incomplete or ...

Perhaps the tar file is bigger than 2 GB and the target filesystem isn't set for largefiles.

You are using tar xvf , right?

SEP

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

And did you use the same 'tar' on both systems? GNU tar will read almost any tar format, but HP tar might have trouble with reading GNU tar

More likely is a kind of umask being applied during the copy. Check the file's mode, or just

# chmod 644 file.tar
# tar tvf file.tar

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Steven E. Protter]

I just ran an addition test.

as root owner chmod 700 tarfile

su - user

tar xvf tarfile

Got your exact message. Its permissions.

SEP

[Elmar P. Kolkman]

You didn't put the tar file on a NFS mounted filesystem by any chance? Because in most cases they are mapping root to anonymous for security reasons, which would explain the security message...

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi Andy,

it can only be a matter of permission, otherwise tar would complain, that this is no tar archive or has found a checksum error or so. Be sure to rule out disk/file system errors.

greetings,

Michael

[Fabio Ettore]

Hi Andy,

just a doubt:

"tar: cannot open file"

is it exactly error message? Or

"tar: cannot open "

In the first case it is very strange, I saw it only when there are hardware problem.
In the second case it is a permission problem as specified perfectly by SEP and others.

Best regards,
Ettore

[Keith Bevan_1]

Andy,

Permissions on the directory where you are trying to untar the file !

Do you have write permission to the directory.

Keith

[Anand_30]

Hi All,

Thanks for the reply. I changed the owner of the tar file and now it has started working fine.

Thanks,
Andy

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

if the problem is solved, could you spare some points from the endless supply of points, HP has, for those, who could help you? ;-)

greetings,

Michael

[KapilRaj]

Why ftp ??? wanna extract a file from node1 to node2 location ?

On node1

cd ;tar cvf - . |rsh node2 "(cd DIR_TO_RESTORE>;tar xvf -)"

Kaps ...