Clayton Cornell writes:

...

'tar xf opt.tar' will strip the leading '/', even if the archive was created with '-P'.

Hmmm no success. It still insists on untarring to /opt/appname - unless I misunderstood the instruction above.

I just wonder if you talk about SuSE Linux and GNU tar. If yes then it is a bug which should be reported. -- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se

On Thursday 16 May 2002 18:15, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Thursday 16 May 2002 17.08, Clayton Cornell wrote:

...

Typed in gtar -x file.tar and it woudl just sit there blinking at me until I Ctrl-C'ed it..

tar -x will take its input from standard input. That "blinking at you" was just tar waiting for data from the command line. ctrl-c killed it, but so would ctrl-d (end of file). You need tar -xf file.tar

regards Anders

Agreed, tar -xf file.tar would extract the tarfile, and has many times for me on my home system. For this situation, I want to untar the file on a system I do not have root access to, and cannot get root access to - not permitted or negotiable due to strict security on this system. I can only work in /home/<username> and /usr/local/ The tarfile I have was created by someone else and it wants to extract to /opt - a directory that exists, but is root write access only. The question is, can I force tar to ignore the leading '/' and extract to, for example: /home/clayton/temp thereby building the directory structure: /home/clayton/temp/opt/<tarred files and directories> instead of: /opt/<tarred files and directories> that it tries to do when I type tar xvf file.tar (and subsequently bounces off the readonly permissions of /opt saying that I do not have permission to write to /opt... which I don't)? Christopher suggested 'tar xf opt.tar' will strip the leading '/' Now, I may be having a senior moment/brain fart, but to me, tar xf opt.tar tells tar to extract the tar file opt.tar. The v option I like to use is for verbose so I can see what is happening and where everthing is magically being put. I experimented a bit with this idea, and just on a whim tried tar xf file.tar opt.tar to see if maybe this is what Christopher meant. Tar hummed along, appearing to do something, and returned the command prompt after about 30 seconds - no errors reported. I was thinking maybe this would create the file opt.tar with the leading '/' removed. It actually did nothing I could see. No opt.tar (not that I really expected it based on what I read in the man pages) and file.tar is still looking to put everything in /opt. Greg suggested I use chroot, but that is not an option... no root access, and chroot is a root command. Alexandr suggested a possible bug, but I don't agree. Tar is doing what it is supposed to do, untarring to the directory structure it was created with... I want to override that. I'm the bug here ;-) So, that about sums up the various responses so far. I get the feeling I am going to have to hunt down a machine I have root access to (ie my own computer at home) and extract the file there and rebuild the tar file without the leading '/'. A poor option because I don't always have the home system easily available. C.

On Thursday 16 May 2002 20.09, Clayton Cornell wrote:

Agreed, tar -xf file.tar would extract the tarfile, and has many times for me on my home system. For this situation, I want to untar the file on a system I do not have root access to, and cannot get root access to - not permitted or negotiable due to strict security on this system. I can only work in /home/<username> and /usr/local/ The tarfile I have was created by someone else and it wants to extract to /opt - a directory that exists, but is root write access only.

Indeed, but the fact that you could use "gtar" suggests that Alexander's hunch was correct, you're not on a linux system when you do this, are you? Is it *BSD? Solaris? In any case, try gtar -xf file.tar //Anders -- I swear I do declare - how did you get that there?

* Clayton Cornell (c.cornell@chello.nl) [020516 11:08]:

Christopher suggested 'tar xf opt.tar' will strip the leading '/'

Now, I may be having a senior moment/brain fart, but to me, tar xf opt.tar tells tar to extract the tar file opt.tar. The v option I like to use is for verbose so I can see what is happening and where everthing is magically being put.

I experimented a bit with this idea, and just on a whim tried tar xf file.tar opt.tar to see if maybe this is what Christopher meant.

No, I meant run tar xf whatever_your_file_is.tar in a directory that you can write to. It will work, I promise: $ sudo tar cP /bin > bin.tar $ tar tf bin.tar /bin/ /bin/dd /bin/cp : /bin/df /bin/ed : $ mv bin.tar ~/tmp $ tar xf bin.tar tar xf bin.tar tar: Removing leading `/' from member names $ find bin bin bin/dd bin/cp : bin/ps bin/rm bin/sh " -- -ckm

I always put a . in front of the files/directories I'm tarring. That way you can extract them anywhere you want/can. Chris Geske LIMS Manager Northern Lake Service, Inc. ph: 715-478-2777 email: lims@newnorth.net -----Original Message----- From: Clayton Cornell [mailto:c.cornell@chello.nl] Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 1:09 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] tar question On Thursday 16 May 2002 18:15, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Thursday 16 May 2002 17.08, Clayton Cornell wrote:

...

Typed in gtar -x file.tar and it woudl just sit there blinking at me until I Ctrl-C'ed it..

tar -x will take its input from standard input. That "blinking at you" was just tar waiting for data from the command line. ctrl-c killed it, but so would ctrl-d (end of file). You need tar -xf file.tar

regards Anders

Agreed, tar -xf file.tar would extract the tarfile, and has many times for me on my home system. For this situation, I want to untar the file on a system I do not have root access to, and cannot get root access to - not permitted or negotiable due to strict security on this system. I can only work in /home/<username> and /usr/local/ The tarfile I have was created by someone else and it wants to extract to /opt - a directory that exists, but is root write access only. The question is, can I force tar to ignore the leading '/' and extract to, for example: /home/clayton/temp thereby building the directory structure: /home/clayton/temp/opt/<tarred files and directories> instead of: /opt/<tarred files and directories> that it tries to do when I type tar xvf file.tar (and subsequently bounces off the readonly permissions of /opt saying that I do not have permission to write to /opt... which I don't)? Christopher suggested 'tar xf opt.tar' will strip the leading '/' Now, I may be having a senior moment/brain fart, but to me, tar xf opt.tar tells tar to extract the tar file opt.tar. The v option I like to use is for verbose so I can see what is happening and where everthing is magically being put. I experimented a bit with this idea, and just on a whim tried tar xf file.tar opt.tar to see if maybe this is what Christopher meant. Tar hummed along, appearing to do something, and returned the command prompt after about 30 seconds - no errors reported. I was thinking maybe this would create the file opt.tar with the leading '/' removed. It actually did nothing I could see. No opt.tar (not that I really expected it based on what I read in the man pages) and file.tar is still looking to put everything in /opt. Greg suggested I use chroot, but that is not an option... no root access, and chroot is a root command. Alexandr suggested a possible bug, but I don't agree. Tar is doing what it is supposed to do, untarring to the directory structure it was created with... I want to override that. I'm the bug here ;-) So, that about sums up the various responses so far. I get the feeling I am going to have to hunt down a machine I have root access to (ie my own computer at home) and extract the file there and rebuild the tar file without the leading '/'. A poor option because I don't always have the home system easily available. C. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com

My experience is that users who are very secretive about versions of their tools and OS often use a commercial Unix and seek help in Linux groups since they know they will get very fast response there. I don't say it's bad but they don't realize the XPG4,... based tools found in commercial Unixes sometimes differ a lot from GNU tools and thus they waste time of people who try to help them. I don't say it is your case, it's just my experience from other e-mail lists.

Wasn't attempting to be deliberately secretive. I use Solaris and SuSE Linux daily... to the point I often neglect to differentiate between them. I use KDE on both... use the same basic tools etc. They start to look the same after a while, and I get tied up in the problem and forget that there are some fundamental underlying differences. Gets me into a bit of hassle once in a while. The actual file itself I thought was not a big issue.. it is a non commercial tar file. I had similar behaviour with other tar files that I experimented with under the same conditions. But, like I said in an earlier email, I may be just having finger problems too. I was actually hoping to learn more about the way tar works rather than waste anyone's time. I will chew through it again tomorrow and see what happens. To those that have been bearing with me on this, thanks... much food for thought. I will not harp on about the issue... if it doesn't work for whatever reason, I will untar on my home machine, and move on. Later C.