help with .tar file

[Angel]

well i have download a .tgz file but i can't use it , what i have to do for use this ??
...i'm new around here and my English is no very good .

...waiting for answers :)

[bac522]

Why kind of file is it you download?

Most applications designed for the IT usually have a .deb extension on them. You can extract tar files, but I believe you have to do so from an xterm window then execute the command tar zxvf [file name] since this is a compressed file.

[convulted]

Welcome to the club Angel :)

Just in case you are new to the Linux world I will expand a bit on what bac522 said.


Most applications written for the Internet Tablet platform are distributed as .deb's, which install themselves just by clicking on them in the File Manager. If you are new to the whole Linux thing you may have downloaded the sources for some application instead of the binaries. Check the site where you downloaded them from, or see if you can find the application you want at maemo.org (in the Applications section).

If you downloaded the .tar file knowing full well that it is an archive and not a directly installable application, you need to install the xterm (osso-xterm) package which will give you a Linux shell on your tablet. Run xterm and then execute:
cd MyDocs to enter what is basically the "My Documents" directory of the system, followed by
tar xvf <filename>.tar or
tar zxvf <filename>.tar.gz which will extract the archive into the current folder. If you don't fancy the shell much, close xterm and fire up the File Manager, where the extracted files will be listed.

HTH,
Dre

[TA-t3]

And don't forget the tvf and ztvf versions of the options, when you only want to list the content (without extracting the files). Very useful also you don't know in advance if the file extracts to a subdirectory or not.

[Angel]

i download the file (
BlueSerial-Maemo - BlueSerial tool compiled to be used on a Nokia 770 Tablet PC ) from this page: http://trifinite.org/trifinite_downloads.html

..i allready extract it and now i have a .sh file , how can i execute this one ??


PD: thanks for the answers :)

[TA-t3]

Generic answer. No idea of what that software package is about:

An .sh file is usually a script (note though that there are no mandatory .extensions in the *nix world, any file can be anything but it's not unusual to use .sh for scripts).
The first line will probably read something like
#!/bin/sh
or similar. Then it's a script (the #! is the clue)
It can be executed either as ./filename.sh or /path/to/filename.sh
if it has the 'x' bit set (do ls -l filename.sh and look for 'x').
(can be added with chmod a+x filename.sh)
Without the 'x'-bit it can be executed with 'sh filename.sh' (if that first line was #!/bin/sh . If it was e.g. #!/usr/bin/python then the way to execute the script would by 'python filename.sh').

But first of all: Don't execute it before you have had a look at it to get an idea of what it does: 'more filename.sh'

[riicky_abc@hotmail.com]

When I did this I got:

tar: option requires an argument -- f
BusyBox v.1.4.1 (todays date) multi-call binary

Usage: tar -[czxtv0] [-f TARFILE] [-C DIR] [FILE(s)]

[TA-t3]

What exactly did you do? The message you got indicated that you didn't enter the command as the earlier postings indicated.. try posting your exact command and someone will correct it.