On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 07:01:32PM +0100, mick crane wrote: > I think my memory has packed up. > I thought you put the options after a hyphen with tar ? > "tar -cfvz archive_file.tgz ./directory_to_archive" > doesn't work. > "tar cfvz archive_file.tgz ./directory_to_archive" > works
Your fundamental problem is that the "-f" option takes an argument. The -f should be followed by the filename, which is presumably the thing ending with .tgz. But the way you've got it written now, the filename argument of the -f option is "vz". So you're asking tar to create an archive file named "vz", and you're using "archive_file.tgz" and "./directory_to_archive" as the names of the things to place inside the archive. What you want is: tar czvf archive_file.tgz ./directory_to_archive Or with the hyphen. It doesn't matter.
