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https://askubuntu.com/questions/291221/error-with-tar-commad-cannot-open-no-such-file-or-directory

Can Someone explain what is wrong with this question, and why any discussion is shut like that by moderators or community leaders?

I am facing this problem, extracting an archive and the tar returns these errors. I wget the archive. move it to a folder and try to extract it, when I extracted in home directory where I downloaded it did extract, creating a mess, but when moved same command no longer works.

$ tar xvf ArchLinuxARM-rpi-latest.tar.gz
1: /home/user/bin/gzip: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

sidenote: I hope codinghorror writes more on how to live in a community or much simply, find the answers you might be looking for when you are just shut down for not having reputation or duplicate tagging, closing questions.

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    The tar file is present in the directory where I am trying to extract it, I used ls to determine if it is there. But now the question whose title you are answering has been taken off, I can't access it.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:00
  • You can read a copy of the webpage from 2013 that you referred to at Ubuntu Pastebin: paste.ubuntu.com/p/Kbyv6zVYyw
    – karel
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:12
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    The questions from the title as well as the first paragraph belongs here, but as for the rest I suggest you ask a new question for it.
    – dessert
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:12
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    a link to a question from 2013?! Make a new one.By the way: we do NOT support arch
    – Rinzwind
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:13
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    We do support extracting archives whose file name contains the name of another distro on Ubuntu though. :)
    – dessert
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:19
  • I asked the question in askubuntu with crude language, many questions general and technical in one post, the question was shifted to meta then the original question linked was 404.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:19
  • thanks @steeldriver for earlier comment, I can't upvote it, not enough reputation, I didn't realise earlier I extracted it in my home directory, tar gave out some flags and ended with errors, but created all the folders, and since archive I am extracting is archlinuxARM for raspberry pi, it is a complete distro, it became evident only when I closed terminal and ran bash again with errors like bash: /home/user/bin/dircolors: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error bash: /home/user/bin/ls: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error turns out PATH made it run ARM code. So thanks.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:38
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    Options sequence matters in tar command while tar -xvfz ArchLinuxARM-rpi-latest.tar.gz' didn't extract this did tar -zxvf ArchLinuxARM-rpi-latest.tar.gz` difference is how the options are sequenced. This information should be included in man pages or atleast in tutorials for tar This I learnt once again after facing the same extraction problems months ago, archlinuxarm archive on ubuntu machine. Then had to install bsdtar as archlinux tutorial suggested to get the job done.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:51
  • The archive extracted but with errors Ignoring unknown extended header keyword 'SCHILY.fflags' using tar I will try bsdtar.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:51
  • I deleted the messed up folders in my home directory, only then could the system tar extract it in a separate folder.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 18:03

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The question you link to doesn't seem to be related to the problem you are having. That question was about someone trying to run tar on a file that didn't exist. It was closed because the issue is trivial (you cannot do anything to a file if that file doesn't exist) and unlikely to help future visitors.

Your issue is complely different, so go ahead and ask a question on the main site. Make sure to include the output of type gzip and file ~/bin/gzip.

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  • Okay I get it now, he just copy pasted the filename from the guide/tutorial rather than actually extracting the downloaded package. "No such file or directory" error shows for different reasons, when the -f option isn't immediately succeeded by the filename. That is how I landed on that page.
    – port
    Feb 17, 2019 at 19:54

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