The code and data behind xeiaso.net
notes: tar pop quiz
Signed-off-by: Xe Iaso <me@xeiaso.net>
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lume/src/notes/2024/pop-quiz-tar.mdx
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lume/src/notes/2024/pop-quiz-tar.mdx
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---
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title: "Pop quiz: what is wrong with this tar command?"
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date: 2024-08-19
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desc: "It's stupider than you think"
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hero:
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ai: "Flux [dev]"
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file: laptop-anger
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prompt: "A green haired anime woman with green eyes and very long hair angrily typing on a laptop, headphones, seattle, space needle, black hoodie, best quality, coffee shop"
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social: true
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---
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Pop quiz: what is wrong with this tar command?
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```sh
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tar cf ../iosevka-iaso.tgz .
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```
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<Conv name="Aoi" mood="wut">
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That looks fine to me? You're creating a tarball in the parent directory with
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the contents of the current working directory. What's the problem?
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</Conv>
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```sh
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$ tar xzf iosevka-iaso.tgz
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gzip: not a compressed stream
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```
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The thing I messed up was not adding `z` to the tarball creation command. I needed to do:
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```sh
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tar czf ../iosevka-iaso.tgz .
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```
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This happens because GNU tar looks at file extensions to try to determine the user's intent. If you do `tar xf foo.tgz` or `tar xf foo.tar.gz`, it will invoke gzip to decompress the tarball for you. This is intended behavior, but that same logic doesn't run when you create a tarball.
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I lost 15 minutes to this today and feel that I need to let y'all know so you can learn from my suffering.