Cannot set target directory when extracting an archive using tar

aixtar

I'm trying to extract a tar archive to a specific directory. I've tried using -C flag but it doesn't work as expected. Here is the commandline I'm using

tar xvf myarchive.tar -C mydirectory/

This gives me a following error:

tar: file -C: not present in archive
tar: file mydirectory/: not present in archive

I've also tried setting the -C flag before the archive file but it just says this:

tar xvf -C mydirectory/ myarchive.tar
tar: -C: No such file or directory

What am I doing wrong?

EDIT:
tar -tf shows that the tar archive does not have full path names: 

tar -tf myarchive.tar
herareport/
herareport/bin/
...

Best Answer

::dusts off Crusty Old Unix Monger badge::

From the comments:

If I try to use sudo -u myuser cd /home/myuser/; sudo -u myuser tar xvf /path/to/myarchive.tar it tries to extract to the wrong directory.

That's because sudo cd is not persistent (Try it yourself -- sudo cd / and then run pwd -- you'll be in the directory you started in, so your second sudo command isn't running where you want it).

To fix this you need to tell sudo to start a shell of its own so you can run multiple commands as the target user.
sudo -u myuser -s -- "(cd /home/myuser ; tar xvf /path/to/tarfile)" will probably do the trick.

(If for some reson your version of sudo dislikes this, sudo -u myuser sh -c "cd /home/myuser ; tar xvf /path/to/tarfile" should also work.)

(Of course none of this explains why -C isn't working as expected on AIX, but it should solve your immediate problem)

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