Wayne Petherick wrote:
> How do I unpack a file with a .tar.bz2 extension?
>
Read the documentation. There are man pages for bzip2 and tar.
That's the general recommendation for what to do, [first]. However,
I'll give you a little rap session on tar. I haven't used bzip2 and
bunzip2, yet, because I mostly work with gzip and therefore gunzip;
however, the tar part I've deal with before, and it's easy to learn from
the man page.
Tip on unarchiving tar files or tar balls: The command is (drumroll
please) ...
% tar xvf {filename}.tar
If it's the only tar file in the directory, then the following will also
work (drumroll, again, please) ...
% tar xvf *.tar
If you want to view the contents of the tar file or ball without
unarchiving, then use tvf, instead of xvf. x => extraction and t=> toc
(table of contents).
If you unarchive, delete the .tar file, and then decide you need to
re-tar, then copy the files to a separate, empty directory and run the
following
% tar cv * -f {filename}.tar
{filename} of course being what ever you want to name the file.
For bz2 decompression and compression, refer to the man page on bzip2:
% man bzip2
The bzip2 executables or programs should be in one of your bin or sbin
directories, either under / or /usr. If you don't find the bzip2
programs, then you'll need to install them from the cdrom, and if not
there, then download and install.
There are other tools which can be used and kpackage might work for
this. I believe that it works for .gz files (not entirely sure, though,
because I haven't explored kpackage much, yet); however, it does work
for .tar archives and rpm (supposedly for rpm anyway).
If you're using kde and want to investigate this alternative, then bring
up kpackage and try it against your .tar.bz2 file.
That's the fairly comprehensive pov from arrogant moi. Just kidding,
i.e., joking. Don't mind me, I joke once in a while; although, it ain't
no joke that you didn't bother reading the man pages, first. Tsk, tsk.
If you want to become at all fluent with Linux/Unix, then you need to
use the reference documentation and learn about all there is and how to
access the different forms or formats. There's man, xman, info, as well
as kde Help, and other tools. After learning the basic Linux/Unix
commands, like cd, pwd, cp, rm, mv, cat, echo, id, who, whoami or "who
am i" (for those who forget who they are - joking, kind of), ..., the
next first lesson in learning to use Linux/Unix systems are the
documentation resources.
mike
