tar: This does not look like a tar archive

Question

I split a huge folder:

tar cvpf - somedir | split -b 50000m

I then transfered split files to another server and merge it:

cat x* > somedir.tar.gz

but when I tried to extract the file it shows errors:

tar xvf tar xvf somedir.tar.gz tar: This does not look like a tar
archive tar: Skipping to next header tar: Archive contains obsolescent
base-64 headers tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

How to fix this problem?

Not a programming question. Try superuser.com or serverfault.com — paulmelnikow, Apr 30 '12 at 23:31
Did you gzip the split files before transferring the parts to the other server? If so, you need to `gunzip` them before `cat`-ing them back together. — Brian Swift, Apr 30 '12 at 23:53

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 30 '12 at 23:32

It is not guaranteed that x* will expand to the same order in which the files are split. Assuming the file is split into three chunks then the first chunk would have the tar(1) header so you'll have to assemble them back in the same way.

Use ls(1) with the -t option to concatenate the files in that order. Hope that helps.

tar: This does not look like a tar archive

1 Answers1