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Accepted
Bakhtiyor
Asked: 2011-09-03 10:59:12 +0800 CST

How do I extract a tarball, skipping some of the leading directories?

  • 772

I am archiving a folder using following command:

tar jcf "home/username/forum/forum.tar.bz2" /var/www/forum/

Then I am extracting using :

tar jxf forum.tar.bz2 ./

It extracts correctly, but creates /home/username/forum/var/www/forum folder. What do I need to do in order to extract it into /home/username/forum folder?

Thank you

server

3 Answers

  1. In addition to dv3500ea's answer, you can use the next command to extract tarballs containing var/www/forum/ to forum/:

    tar xjf forum.tar.bz2 --strip-components=2

    var/ and www/ are two path components, hence the 2 in --strip-components.

    If you're not sure what's inside a tarball, use the t option:

    tar tjf forum.tar.bz2

    Pipe it through less so you an use arrow keys for scrolling.

    A general note about the options used:

    • x - extracts a tarball, I always place it as first option since it's most logical to see what a command does
    • c - creates a tarball
    • t - lists the contents of a tarball
    • j - make tar uncompress bzip2 compressed tarballs. This is redundant with the .bz2 extension, so you may remove this option as well
    • f - this option expects a filename as argument, it's either the tarball to be extracted (tar xf file.tar.bz2) or created (tar cf file.tar.bz2)
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  2. Best Answer

    When creating the archive use -C /var/www/ to change the current directory to /var/www while creating the archive. 

    tar jcf home/username/forum/forum.tar.bz2 -C /var/www/ forum

    This will cause the 'forum' folder to be in the top level of the archive and will therefore extract directly into the current folder when you run:

    tar jxf forum.tar.bz2 ./
    • 6

  3. The fast (and possibly wrong) solution would be to change your command to change directories before tarring. IE:

    cd /var/www/forum; tar jcf "home/username/forum/forum.tar.bz2" .
    • 0