Thank you both (Martin and Diez) for your help. The 17 GByte TAR archive was unpacked without problems the way you suggested.
Let's summarize: # Python tarfile module can't extract files from newer TAR archives (archived with tar 1.14 or later) # The core of my problems was, that I was not aware how easy it is to install and work with Cygwin and that to get Cygwins tar.exe to work it is necessary to use the provided Cygwin bash-3.00 shell an NOT the Windows command shell (DOS-box) . The receipt for unpacking Wikipedia media files provided as TAR archives when using Microsoft Windows is: Step 1. download http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/setup.exe Step 2a. run the downloaded setup.exe which goes online and lets you choose which packages should be installed Step 2b. select for the installation additional to suggested ones the tar package version 1.15 Step 3. use the Cygwin icon on the Desktop or in Start-Programs- Cygwin-Cygwin Bash Shell to start a Cygwin shell and type : bash-3.00$ ./bin/tar.exe --extract --directory=/cygdrive/i/wikipedia/en/media -f /cygdrive/j/download.wikimedia.org/archives/images/en/20050530_upload.tar where i: and j: are the drive letters of appropriate Windows drives. The media files stored in TAR archive j: \download.wikimedia.org\archives\images\en\20050530_upload.tar will be unpacked to i:\wikipedia\en\media directory Step 4. wait, wait, wait ... (how long depends most on speed of your harddrives, on my system with USB drives appr. one hour) Step 5. BE HAPPY :)) and enjoy it, because you have mastered a step towards your own static HTML version of Wikipedia. The problems with extracting the content from the MySQL database dumps will kill you soon - and if not, especially for non-english languages (like German, Polish, Russian) and with math-formulas converted to pictures, all done on a Windows system __PLEASE__ share your know-how with me !!! (the only useful information I found on Internet about it were postings within the thread I initiated a longer time ago myself http://www.pythonforum.org/ftopic19424_Wikipedia___conversion_of_in_SQL_database_stored_data_to_HTM.html ) Claudio "Diez B. Roggisch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Claudio Grondi wrote: > > remember. I work in a Windows command shell > > (DOS-box) and mount says: > > j: on /cygdrive/j , but I don't know how to write > > the entire path > > "j:\o\archives\images\dump.tar", > > so that the file can be found by tar.exe and > > unpacked to "i:\images" . > > tar.exe --extract --directory=tmp -f j:/o/archives/images/dump.tar > > results in: > > /usr/bin/tar: j\:/o/archives/images/dump.tar: Cannot open: Input/Output > > error > > telling > > tar.exe --extract --directory=tmp -f /cygdrive/j/o/archives/images/dump.tar > > doesn't work either. > > > Try the cygpath-command like this: > > echo `cygpath c:\\some\\windows\\path` > > That should yield > > /cygdrive/c/some/windows/path > > Alternatively, do somethink like this > > mkdir -p /mnt/j > > mount j: /mnt/j > > Then /mnt/j should be the root for all files under j: > > HTH Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list