---------------------------------------- > Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 15:16:43 -0600 > From: ebl...@redhat.com > To: cygwin@cygwin.com > Subject: Re: tar zxvf won't work with Redhat generated compressed tar file > > On 04/20/2015 03:08 PM, Murthy Gandikota wrote: > >>> >>>> $ tar xvf mytar.gz >>>> tar: This does not look like a tar archive >>>> tar: Skipping to next header >>>> tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors >>> >>> Then what makes you think it is actually a tar archive? >>> What >>> >>> gunzip> mytar < mytar.gz; file mytar >>> >>> says? >>> > >> Sorry, didn't notice the top-posting.... here is the output to the command >> >> mytar: gzip compressed data, last modified: Tue Mar 24 03:50:58 2015, from >> Unix > > Then it looks like you have a DOUBLE-compressed file. That is, someone > took a .tar.gz file, and ran THAT through gzip again (which seldom does > anything except make a LARGER file - because the first round of > compression removed any redundancy). Tar cannot read a > double-compressed stream, but breaking things into two steps lets you > get back to a single compressed stream, where the tar call then > auto-decompresses because you weren't supplying an explicit 'z' the > second time around. To prove it, try: > > gunzip <mytar.gz>mytar > tar zxvf mytar > > and if it still untars with an explicit decompression, then you have > proven that your original file was double-compressed. Also, if I'm > right about double compression, then mytar.gz would likely be slightly > larger than mytar (rather than the usual case of the .gz being > noticeably smaller). > > -- > Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 > Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org >
Yes, Sir. It did untar properly. So the problem is with the server compressing during the download (I get the file from a http server)? Thanks a lot for your help -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
