wbenn...@turing.une.edu.au writes:
> I don't understand this. I have the original download file from Freshmeat
> on my desktop. The file is CptCrosswords-1.2.Linix.x86.tgz
[...]
> [I know I know. I can probably use this, but I'd still like to know which
> memory hole the .tgz file fell in.]
At a guess your web browser and/or their web server colluded to notice that it
was compressed, and to automagically decompress the gzip bit for you, with
only the tar part left behind.
(My next guess is that your web browser hates you deeply, and removed the gz
extension without decompressing it. :)
> I intend to use
> ./configure && make && make makeinstall
>
> Will the fact that its a tarball make any difference, or will I have to
> de-tar it first?
Well, you need to extract the files from the tar archive, yes.
Perhaps this will be made clearer with a little explanation, and please
forgive me if this is obvious to you:
A tar "file" is a single stream of bytes that holds a whole lot of files and
their metadata (permissions, directory, etc), one after another.
Unlike the zip format and other things popular on non-Unix platforms this is
just the files - no compression or anything.
To compress these for transmission most Unix folks use a compression "filter",
which takes one stream of bytes (the tar file) and outputs another (the
compressed tar file). gzip and bzip2 are popular here.
So, a 'tgz', or 'tar.gz', file means:
A set of files ...
...wrapped into a single stream using tar...
...fed through the 'gzip' compression filter...
...and handed to you.
So, if something removed the gz part and left only the tar part you still need
to unpack the tar bits.
(In 'tar xfz foo.tar.gz' the 'x' means extract, the 'f' means from a file, and
the 'z' means decompress the gzip part. Omit that, for only 'xf', and you
will unpack a tar file that is not compressed.)
Regards,
Daniel
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✣ Daniel Pittman ✉ dan...@rimspace.net ☎ +61 401 155 707
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