*BSD News Article 69965


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From: jackson@replicant.csci.unt.edu (Bruce Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: A tale of terrible .tar troubles...
Date: 2 Jun 1996 04:47:15 GMT
Organization: University of North Texas, Denton
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <4or6cj$9ta@hermes.acs.unt.edu>
References: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960526103708.414A-100000@jesus.serv.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: replicant.csci.unt.edu

In article <Pine.BSF.3.91.960526103708.414A-100000@jesus.serv.net>,
jimbo  <root@jesus.serv.net> wrote:

> Ok, I'm new at all this...just got my X-Windows and PPP running, and was 
> looking forward to installing some software that's not in package format 
> (i.e. Netscape), and it gunzips just fine, but whenever I try to do a tar 
> -x command, it throws this at me:

> tar:  can't open /dev/rst0:  Device not configured.

> I can't find any mention of this device in any documentation, although I 
> did find the device itself in the /dev directory.

Your difficulty is with the tar command, not any device.  Tar is a
Tape-ARchiver so it defaults to a tape drive instead of a file.  Since
you do not have a tape drive it is not configured.  To extract from
a file or from a device other than the default one you must use the
"f" flag:

tar xf file.tar


--
 Bruce Jackson        | P. O. Box 13886-NT   | GAB 550E
 UNIX Systems Admin.  | Denton TX 76203-3886 | (817)565-2279
 Computer Sciences    | jackson@cs.unt.edu   | FAX (817)565-2799
 Univ. of North Texas | http://replicant.csci.unt.edu/~jackson/