puzzle with tar pgm

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1

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong. I did what it says in the book… The file which results, z, is the size I would expect, 2.2 GB.

I should mention here how right you were when you guessed that the instability of my openSUSE 12.2 was due to my laptop being dirty and overheating. It was cleaned and I got a frame to lift if from the table and to keep it cooler. No more problems with that now. Actually, I went to Linux because my Windows 7 had become unstable. Windows, too, runs nicely now but…I am not going back to it, I **** SUSE a lot better!

Thank yoi,
pe1800

pe1800@linux-gkd7:~> pwd
/home/pe1800
pe1800@linux-gkd7:~> ls -l
total 44
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Aug 5 12:52 bin
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Jun 3 18:38 Desktop
drwx------ 9 pe1800 users 4096 Aug 20 18:55 Documents
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Sep 9 11:12 Downloads
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Apr 5 12:48 Music
drwx------ 12 pe1800 users 4096 Sep 9 21:12 Pictures
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Mar 29 14:11 Public
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Mar 29 14:09 public_html
drwxr-xr-x 2 pe1800 users 4096 Aug 14 13:36 technotes
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Apr 23 15:52 Templates
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Mar 29 14:11 Videos
pe1800@linux-gkd7:~> tar -cfz backup-pe1800.tar.gz *
tar: backup-pe1800.tar.gz: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
pe1800@linux-gkd7:~> ls -l
total 2333660
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Aug 5 12:52 bin
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Jun 3 18:38 Desktop
drwx------ 9 pe1800 users 4096 Aug 20 18:55 Documents
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Sep 9 11:12 Downloads
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Apr 5 12:48 Music
drwx------ 12 pe1800 users 4096 Sep 9 21:12 Pictures
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Mar 29 14:11 Public
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Mar 29 14:09 public_html
drwxr-xr-x 2 pe1800 users 4096 Aug 14 13:36 technotes
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Apr 23 15:52 Templates
drwx------ 2 pe1800 users 4096 Mar 29 14:11 Videos
-rw-r–r-- 1 pe1800 users 2389616640 Sep 11 19:23 z
pe1800@linux-gkd7:~>
2

The -f option should be last, it indicates the name of the archive. Try

tar -czf backup-pe1800.tar.gz *
3

You told it to tar to the file “z”. So it did. It skipped the input file “backup-pe1800.tar.gz” which it could not find.

For future use, I suggest


tar zcf backup-pe1800.tar.gz

The file name is what comes after the “f”, and in your case that was “z”.

4

a small bit of advice
please spell out the words

i was trying to figure out where the image format “pgm” came into play here
"Portable Gray Map " – pgm
because a tar of a pgm format image , will be a few bits bigger that the image .

5

One thing I noticed is there was no file listed. What you listed were directories. The file, as you stated would be in some directory. **backup-pe1800.tar.gz **is your file. When you do

ls -al

if you don’t see backup-pe1800.tar.gz, then you are not in the right directory.

6

And please use CODE tags around your computer text (like the others above do). It is the # button in the tool bar of the post editor.