Re: tar (was: 20090723KP -- Copying KMail)

Hello,

Am Montag, 27. Juli 2009 schrieb Bruce MacArthur:
> I changed directory to /suse102/home/bruce/.kde/share/apps/kmail and 
> entered the command tar -cvjf /home/bu4lu3si1/suseKMail.tar.bz2. The 
> system response was "tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
> Try 'tar --help' or 'tar --usage' for more information.

you missed the directory to tar! It's
$ cd /suse102/home/bruce/.kde/share/apps/kmail
$ tar -cvjf /home/bu4lu3si1/suseKMail.tar.bz2 .
The last part is a single dot, which means "actual directory".
There are 4 parts:
- the command "tar"
- the command options "-cvjf"
- the tar file (as a addendum to the option "f")
- the directory to tar (".")

Alternatively you could also
$ cd /suse102/home/bruce/.kde/share/apps
$ tar cvzf /home/bu4lu3si1/suseKMail.tar.gz kmail
But now if you untar the files you get a directory "kmail"
and all the file paths start with kmail/

For more help on tar (as always):
$ man tar
or
$ info tar

Good night,
	Martin
-- 
_________________________________________
Martin Bernreuther	[email protected]