How do I extract a tarball, skipping some of the leading directories?

Question

I am archiving a folder using following command:

tar jcf "home/username/forum/forum.tar.bz2" /var/www/forum/

Then I am extracting using :

tar jxf forum.tar.bz2 ./

It extracts correctly, but creates /home/username/forum/var/www/forum folder. What do I need to do in order to extract it into /home/username/forum folder?

Thank you

Solution 1

When creating the archive use -C /var/www/ to change the current directory to /var/www while creating the archive.

tar jcf home/username/forum/forum.tar.bz2 -C /var/www/ forum

This will cause the 'forum' folder to be in the top level of the archive and will therefore extract directly into the current folder when you run:

tar jxf forum.tar.bz2 ./

Solution 2

In addition to dv3500ea's answer, you can use the next command to extract tarballs containing var/www/forum/ to forum/:

tar xjf forum.tar.bz2 --strip-components=2

var/ and www/ are two path components, hence the 2 in --strip-components.

If you're not sure what's inside a tarball, use the t option:

tar tjf forum.tar.bz2

Pipe it through less so you an use arrow keys for scrolling.

A general note about the options used:

• x - extracts a tarball, I always place it as first option since it's most logical to see what a command does
• c - creates a tarball
• t - lists the contents of a tarball
• j - make tar uncompress bzip2 compressed tarballs. This is redundant with the .bz2 extension, so you may remove this option as well
• f - this option expects a filename as argument, it's either the tarball to be extracted (tar xf file.tar.bz2) or created (tar cf file.tar.bz2)

Comments

[Admin]

My money is on that you can't do this with just tar. I'd say if you have to do this often use the -C argument and a short bash script.

[Admin]

@sebastian_k. I think you have lost your money:). dv3500ea solved it with just tar command and this is what I was looking for.

[Admin]

... so the -C did work. I stand corrected, money lost. :D