unable to uncompress a file

[James Ellis_1]

I am trying to install the Xerox Phaser 5400 driver. Got the tar ball from another server, where another SA successfully installed this driver. I have successfully copied over from another server (binary), and tar -xvf filename.tar.

The two files copied over are:

HPUXXPXX_3.01.23.tar and
PrinterPkgXPXX_2003_01_06.tar

After taring these files, the CentreWare Readme Services for Unix system says this is a two part installation, and the code mackage must be installed first, followed by printer support package.

After taring the code package, I get three more tar files, and they are:

pkg_tar.z1
pkg_tar.z2
pkg_tar.z3

Here is my problem, I am unable to tar these files, unable to gunzip or uncompress these files. I believe its the suffix that is causing problems. Would renaming the pkg_tar.z1 to pkg_tar.z do the trick?

Has anyone worked with installing this driver?

Thanks.

[Mark Grant · Accepted solution]

Firstly, run "file" on them to see what they are. If they are, indeed, gzipped files and the extension is causing a problem, it is perfectly acceptable to rename them.

[Umapathy S]

I stand by Mark's suggestion on this. I have in the past did the renaming of the extensions to unzip and untar.

Umapathy

[Patrick Wallek]

Yes you could easily rename them.

I would do something like:

mv pkg_tar.z1 pkg_1_tar.Z
mv pkg_tar.z2 pkg_2_tar.Z
mv pkg_tar.z3 pkg_3_tar.Z

I would do that just so you don't get confused down the road and wonder which was which.

[V. Nyga]

Hi,

maybe it should be one file?
then you should make a cat of these 3 files to one file.
But first I would try another ending .gz for gunzip, .Z for uncompress.

Good luck
Volkmar

[James Ellis_1]

Doing a file pkg_tar.z1 shows this is a compressed data, block data,, 16 bits.

So I will rename the pkg_tar.z1 to pkg_1_tar.Z and uncompress it.

Thanks and will let you know if this works.

[James Ellis_1]

I am able to uncompress pkg_1_tar.Z but doing the pkg_2_tar.Z gave me an error. The error message says this is not in compressed format and its an awk program.

If this is not compressed and an awk program, then why did the original file come with the z2 suffix (pkg_tar.z2)?

Since this is an awk program, and not a compressed file, I don't need to unccompress it. The uncompressed pkg_1_tar.Z gave me pkg_1_tar, and I need to untar this file, and maybe this wile will run this awk program? Is that the way it's supposed to work?

Thank you all for your help.

[Mark Grant]

I wouldn't necessarily believe it IS an awk file. It might be but file often thinks things are awk files when they are not.

Do a more on the file and see if it really is an awk file. If not, it is possible that this file was not copied in binary mode.

If it is an awk file then it is odd that it was named as it was and extremely odd that there was no script to run your awk file with.

[Rory R Hammond]

If you unsure if it a compressed file a gzip file and the extension is unclear. rather than renaming them just pipe it to the uncompress program you think it might be:


cat pkg_tar.z1 |gunzip
cat pkg_tar.z1 |uncompress

[Seth Parker]

Try what V. Nyga suggested and cat them into a single file. The first file may be going through gzip fine because it has the header in it, whereas the other 2 files don't (since they're the middle and end of the full file).

Try this:

cat pkg_tar.z1 pkg_tar.z2 pkg_tar.z3 > pkg.tar.Z
uncompress pkg.tar.Z

Or, go crazy and extract it at the same time:

cat pkg_tar.z1 pkg_tar.z2 pkg_tar.z3 | uncompress | tar -xf -

Regards,
Seth