tar: Failed open to read on /dev/nrst0 <No such file or directory>

[jcontonio]

So I re-installed OS X on a seperate partition, and now I can't use tar. Even though it's there. It gives me the message :
tar: Failed open to read on /dev/nrst0 <No such file or directory>

Can anyone tell me what this means?

 

[sverre]

It means you didn't give it the f flag. Normally an extraction command should look like this (v is for verbose and is optional):

tar xfv &lt;tar file&gt;
or
tar xfvz &lt;tar.gz file&gt;

 

[jpford]

Exactly, when you don't specify the f option it automatically will go to the default device. An example is if I don't use the f it will go to my default device which is my tape drive. I'm assuming that probably is trying to write to your floppy drive or where it should be.

Originally posted by sverre
It means you didn't give it the f flag. Normally an extraction command should look like this (v is for verbose and is optional):

tar xfv <tar file>
or
tar xfvz <tar.gz file>

 

[jcontonio]

awesome, thank you very much. I just found that weird.

 

[LunaMorena]

Well given that tar actually stands for "Tape ARchive" it's not that weird. That's pretty much the same behavior it has on any *nix system. You just have to get used to using the f flag all the time.