UNTAR?

[vefatica]

A friend salvaged my belongings from a 25 year-old Linux machine. I got them as vefatica.tar.gz (made today on Ubuntu). While in c:\users\vefatica\desktop\vefatica\, I issued "UNTAR vefatica.tar.gz" and got thousands (expected) messages like these.

=> C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\bookmarks.xml
=> C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\konq_history
=> C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\bookmarks.xml.tbcache

But when it was all over all I had in C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\ was a deeper-still vefatica directory containing these few EMPTY directories.

 Directory of  C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\vefatica\*

2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    ..
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .emacs.d
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .gnome
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .gnome-desktop
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .lftp
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .openoffice
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    .xfm
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    mail
2018-09-24  20:41         <DIR>    News
                   0 bytes in 0 files and 10 dirs

 

[vefatica]

I should add that the archive was originally named vefatica.tgz. When I tried to UNTAR it I got

c:\users\vefatica\desktop\vefatica> untar vefatica.tgz
TCC: Error in archive C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\vefatica.tgz :
  A numeric field in the header contains non-numeric data.

 

[rconn]

You probably should have said UNTAR /D.

 

[vefatica]

You probably should have said UNTAR /D.

With /d I get the same error when the file is named vefatica.tgz. When it's named vafetica.tar.gz, I get the 1998 messages I mentioned earlier. But when it's over, I have only

c:\users\vefatica\desktop\vefatica> dir /u2 vefatica\

 Volume in drive C is unlabeled    Serial number is b813:1d21
          10,539,236 bytes in 15 files and 10 dirs    10,575,872 bytes allocated
       1,765,195,776 bytes free

There really should be close to 2000 files. I have unzipped it successfully (and completely) on Win10/WSL

 

[vefatica]

Oops! I should have done this (below). But there should be a lot more. The compressed archive is nearly 50 MB. I can make it available to you. I don't think there's anything private or damning (or dirty) in it.

c:\users\vefatica\desktop\vefatica> dir /s /u2 vefatica\

 Volume in drive C is unlabeled    Serial number is b813:1d21

    Total for:  C:\Users\vefatica\Desktop\vefatica\vefatica\
          10,577,873 bytes in 39 files and 38 dirs    10,690,560 bytes allocated
       1,765,064,704 bytes free

 

[rconn]

Did you UNGZIP it before UNTAR'ing it?

 

[vefatica]

Did you UNGZIP it before UNTAR'ing it?

No. The help says I didn't have to. But I just tried (UNGZIP then UNTAR) and got the same results as in my most recent post, 39 files and 38 dirs

 

[rconn]

I'll need to see the file to see how they compressed it.

 

[vefatica]

I'll need to see the file to see how they compressed it.

Do you use OneDrive?

 

[vefatica]

I emailed a OneDrive link. You should be able to just download it.

 

[AnrDaemon]

Did you try any other archiver? 7-zip or WinRAR should handle it with no fuss.

 

[vefatica]

Did you try any other archiver? 7-zip or WinRAR should handle it with no fuss.

Both 7za.exe and gzip.exe unzip it successfully. Tar.exe (v 1.11.2 from Gnu UnxUtils) extracts it successfully.

 

[Charles G]

Dumb me Vince but what is the difference between 7za.exe and 7z.exe ?

 

[vefatica]

Dumb me Vince but what is the difference between 7za.exe and 7z.exe ?

I don't know. 7za.exe (v 9.20, 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov) just happens to be what I have.

 

[vefatica]

I don't know. 7za.exe (v 9.20, 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov) just happens to be what I have.

I just got a newer one (v 18.05, 2018). The exe is 7z.exe. It unzipped and extracted (correctly, apparently) the file in question (in two steps). The older one might have done that; I didn't try.

 

[rconn]

The problem with TCC / UNTAR is that the tar file has symlinks, which the Ipworks compression library does not support. The library was defaulting to ignoring the symlink errors, which made it go off the rails shortly thereafter. I made a change for the next build to treat the symlink error as a fatal error.

 

[AnrDaemon]

Normal (read: community accepted) behavior on systems that not readily support symlinks is to ignore them.
Not fail hard.

 

[rconn]

I don't think that a command that is supposed to extract files and directories should act as if it succeeded when it failed.

 

[AnrDaemon]

It did NOT fail. It worked as intended. Created everything it could and should. If there were warnings (due to unsupported features), it's not enough of a reason to crash.