tar

[Jade Bulante]

I have file that I need to uncompress. The file is PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

I tried tar -xvf and did does not work. Need help.

[S.K. Chan · Accepted solution]

If the tar file is compressed, it usually has .Z extension or .gz extension. Try these ..

# gunzip PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar
or
# uncompress PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

then only you un-tar it ..

# tar xvf PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

You might want to index-list it first just to see what's in it ..

# tar tvf PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The other possibility is that you downloaded this file in ASCII mode and you should have used BINARY. You really should always use
tar -vtf before tar -xvf so that you can simply list the contents without doing any harm. Who knows, your harmless little tarball might just overwrite /stand/vmunix.

[Craig Rants]

Jade,

determine what type of file it is

file PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

If it is a gzip file try this

gzip -d < PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar | tar xvf -

GL,
C

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Jade,

What was the format you tried,

tar tvf PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

To list the contents of this archive of it is in tar format, and

tar xvf PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

to extract the contents from this archive.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Jade Bulante]

Non of the commands work at at all. I get a directory checksum error.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Jade,

If you have downloaded this file from the net, suggest you download the file once again. Do remember to choose the binary mode of transfer. Also if you had downloaded the file to your windows workstation, ftp'ed it to your unix server, suggest you try to download the file directly to your unix server. Then try the extraction once again.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Kenny Chau]

Are you sure that the tar file is a zipped file? If yes, rename the tar file to a file ended with .Z,
eg. mv PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar.Z

Then uncompress this file:
# uncompress PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

Then try to list the contents from the tar file:
# tar tvf PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

If you can list the contents, then you can extract the tar file by:
# tar xvf PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

Hope this helps.
Kenny.

[Sachin Patel]

Well Jade,
If you gets checksum error that means your file is bad. Download it again and use binary mode.

If you are downloading on windows system use whatever is default and transfer that file using ftp binary mode to unix system.

For example when I download any patchs, window generate PHCO_????.txt file then I move that file to unix and rename to PHCO_????

Sachin

[Frank Slootweg]

> Non of the commands work at at all. I get a directory checksum error.

Well, Craig advised to give a file(1) command and that *can not* give a directory checksum error, so what *does* it say?

I.e. what is the output of

$ file PGPcmdln_6.5.8_HPUX_FW.tar

Also see Sachin's comments on binary mode for FTP.

[Frank Slootweg]

You gave everybody 10 points, which is very generous, probably too generous, but I am sure that we all also would like to know *what* the actual (problem and) solution was, so please post this information. Thank you.