.tar

Murdock

Can anyone tell me how to install a downloaded .tar file?

Is the following comand sufficient?
tar x f v z "filename"


And where should it be installed to so that all users on the system will be able to use it?

Typedef

You might have better luck with these commands

tar xvf somefile.tar
tar xvfz somefile.tar.gz
tar xvfy somefile.tar.bz2
or
tar xvfI somefile.tar.bz2
or
bzip2 -d somefile.tar.bz2
tar xvf somefile.tar
or something.
'The choice is made,,,,, the traveller has come'

dahamsta

Can anyone tell me how to install a downloaded .tar file?

You don't really "install" a tar file per se. It's just an archive (tape archive, originally used for magnetic tape backups) which contains a set of files, usually in their original hierarchy. When you "untar" a file, you're essentially restoring the files, although it can of course be to a different location.

Is the following comand sufficient? tar x f v z "filename"

Lose the 'z'. The 'z' is an interface to the gzip program, used for compression and decompression. If the file doesn't have a 'gz' extension appended to the 'tar' extension (or the alternative 'tgz'), you don't need it (and it'll probably crap out if you do).

And where should it be installed to so that all users on the system will be able to use it?

Well, you could put it in /tmp I guess, but most distros clean /tmp out periodically now. But it'll do for now:

cd /tmp
tar xvf <file>.tar

I'm just reading the Linux Filesystem Standard as it happens, so I'll tell you when you /should/ put it later.

adam

Hecate

suppose it depends on your flavour of *nix, /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin would be the usual place to put it since they'd be in all the user's paths.

dahamsta

Depends on what's in the archive really. If it ain't a core binary, it probaly shouldn't go in /usr/bin anyway. /usr/local/bin is probably right if it's a binary.

adam