[Tutor] Linux help required

[Remco Gerlich]

On  0, alan.gauld@bt.com wrote:
> > | that the zip file can't be opened by gunzip under Linux. I have 
> 
> Thanks to Deirdre for pointing out that gunzip only works on 
> single files, I hadn't realised that - I've only used in on 
> Unix up til now where tgz is the norm...

It's exactly the same on Unix and Linux. .tgz even means tar/GNU zip.

A .tgz is usually called .tar.gz. That is, you make an archive out of a
bunch of files, the .tar, then you gzip that, and it's called .tar.gz,
sometimes abbreviated .tgz for people using DOS or similar systems.

That's two commands to make a compress archive, although GNU tar has an
option to combine the two, so it's one command again.

But you were talking about a zip file, which isn't the same as a gzip file
at all.

> > Also, I think tar/gzip check the extension of the file they are run
> > on.  I have generally found the .tar.gz extension to work better than
> > the .tgz extension.

On Unix, extensions are irrelevant.

> > Did you use gzip or zip?  
> 
> gzip.

Ah, so ignore all the talk about unzip given earlier, that has to do with
zip files :)

> > Is this the file you are asking about?  If not I think it would be
> > great if you could provide a tarball/zip archive of your tutorial.
> 
> Yes, the zip version has been there since day 1, but I had assumed 
> Linux could read it... Its only this week I've discovered that it 
> couldn't(although with zip maybe it cann...)

Most distributions do have zip/unzip commands. Someone was talking about
Debian, maybe it's those pedants whining about 'Free' again ;-)

gzip is GNU zip, or as Free as it gets, anyway.


PS bzip2 is a lot better, of course. <grin, duck and run>
-- 
Remco Gerlich