Extracting individual Files via tar

[Martin McCormick]

	My thanks to 3 people who pointed out the error of my ways.  I
actually had the positions of the archive and the file I was extracting
reversed as far as what I was thinking should be the correct order.
Then, I thought maybe I didn't need to have the f flag.  Anyway, it
all works fine now.  Many thanks.

Martin McCormick
"Rob" writes:
>You should always use the f option to specify the archive - for example
>
>    tar -tzf archive.tgz
>
>to list or
>
>    tar -xzf archive.tgz
>
>to extract. In your example below, you didn't specify an archive so it
>defaulted to the device /dev/sa0, which it couldn't open.
>
>Any extra arguments are treated as archive members - eg
>
>    tar -xzf archive.tgz files/to/extract
>
>In your example below, it was trying to find 2 files in a non-existent
>archive.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Martin McCormick" <martin at dc.cis.okstate.edu>
>Subject: Extracting individual Files via tar
>
>
>> The command
>>
>> tar ztf  /usr/local/src/ports.tar.gz
>>
>> produces a table of contents just like the man page says it should.
>> The man page also says that individual files can be recovered or
>> listed but I haven't gotten that to work at all. if I try:
>>
>> $ tar zt ports/print/pstotext/ /usr/local/src/ports.tar.gz
>>
>> tar (child): /dev/sa0: Cannot open: Permission denied
>> tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
>>
>> gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
>> tar: Child returned status 2
>> tar: ports/print/pstotext: Not found in archive
>> tar: /usr/local/src/ports.tar.gz: Not found in archive
>> tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
>>
>> In the successful test, tar obviously knew which specification
>> was the archive and was able to uncompress it with the z flag.  The
>> file specification I am attempting to recover from the archive throws
>> tar completely off.  I looked in the handbook and all the examples I
>> found were the more usual procedure of unpacking whole file systems
>> as in
>>
>> tar zxf somedir/archive.tar.gz
>>
>> I'm not having trouble with that use of tar.
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
>> OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group
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>