Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!pdn!pdnag1!wolfe From: wolfe@pdnag1.uucp (0000-Mike Wolfe(0000)) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: relative pathname question! Message-ID: <4008@pdn.UUCP> Date: 10 Aug 88 14:39:38 GMT References: <1670003@hpcilzb.HP.COM> <5762@super.upenn.edu> <5103@rpp386.UUCP> Sender: news@pdn.UUCP Reply-To: wolfe@pdnag1.UUCP (0000-Mike Wolfe) Organization: Paradyne Corporation, Largo, Florida Lines: 30 In article <5103@rpp386.UUCP> jfh@rpp386.UUCP (The Beach Bum) writes: >In article <5762@super.upenn.edu> spolsky@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Joel Spolsky) writes: >>As far as I can tell, there is NO way to extract tar files with >>absolute pathnames anywhere except their original positions. > >sure is, and a damned clever one at that. its called "sub-system root". >look up chroot(2) in your unix manual. Be forewarned (or forearmed :-), When using chroot you change the root dir for ALL path searches. So when tar calls mkdir (on my old 5.0 system) it assumes that /bin/mkdir is where it's at. This means that you have to create some kind of link/copy of mkdir and tar in the new "tree". On 5.3 systems it becomes even more of a bugger, shared lib's can't be accessed. I assume this can be worked around in a similar fashion but I was too grossed out to try, YECH! Chroot is a kludge! But it does have a limited usefulness in allowing you to run SOME software on floppy without installing it first. There is a public domain tar that I believe can be used to extract absolute path names. This is a much better way than the obsolete chroot. ---- Mike Wolfe Paradyne Corporation, Mail stop LF-207 DOMAIN wolfe@pdn.UUCP 8550 Ulmerton Road, PO Box 2826 UUCP ...!uunet!pdn!wolfe Largo, FL 34649-2826 EARNET (813) 530-8361 Canada is to space flight as NASA is to Hockey.