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Windows 7zip Fails to Extract a Tar Archive created on Linux

Just had an error in Windows 7-Zip 4.6.5 trying to extract a Linux tar archive. A reasonably large tar archive of 3.76 GB.

Got this error:

Can not open file C:\path\to\tarfile.tar as archive

Can not open file C:\path\to\tarfile.tar as archive

So fell back to using Cygwin
Using tar -tf archive.tar allowed me to list the contents of the archive just fine.

But attempting to extract the archive threw up errors such as this:
tar: usr/share/man/fr/man3/Defoma\:\:Font.3pm.gz: Cannot open: Invalid argument
The problem was the `:’ characters windows won’t allow them.

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Posted in IT Tips.

1 comment

By admin – May 28, 2010

One Response

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  1. mukesh sawant says

    DEAR FRIEND I cannot open the zip file error is coming (can not open file c:path document .zip’ as archive) pl’z give me the solution for this

    May 30, 2011, 5:17 PM Reply



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