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Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 16:00:56 -0600
From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
Subject: Extracting individual Files via tar
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	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