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I have a 4Gb tar.gz archive downloaded from a Linux server machine. The machine we are on is a Zorin 16 OS machine. I am using both Nautilus / Archiver (file-roller I think it is) / Xarchiver

We have many files in a sub folder but we can't extract them because Archiver states Invalid file name. For example, the names in the archive are:

1601142280.M258953P10421.basic.address.com,S=17488,W=19679:2,S

I am also unable to rename the files in the archive (renaming to remove the : and similar characters).

I need to extract all of these files from the archive into the file system here but I can't do this. How can I get this extraction to work? The file names are not necessarily needing to be preserved.

The .tar.gz archive has been downloaded locally on to an ext4 / USB type data drive.

For each file of this filename structure, using Xachiver extraction GUI returns:

/directory/structure/to/files/cur/1699067526.M500170P14222.basic.address.com,S=103498,W=106677\:2,af: Cannot open: Invalid argument

And using the tar xvzf my_archive.tar.gz format returns:

46725.M936P5193.basic.address.com,S=15058,W=15294\:2,Scf: Cannot open: Invalid argument

Other files from the archive extract ok.

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  • @steeldriver I'm not sure, it uses a program called "archiver" which I've read elsewhere is a reference to the program "file-roller". THe file is filename.tar.gz . The file is openable and readable but I can't extract or edit the files themselves. Commented Oct 16, 2023 at 17:21
  • What errors do you get if you open a terminal, cd to the directory where the archive is and then run tar xvzf filename.tar.gz? Commented Oct 16, 2023 at 17:35
  • @terdon 46725.M936P5193.basic.address.com,S=15058,W=15294\:2,Scf: Cannot open: Invalid argument for all of these types of files Commented Oct 16, 2023 at 17:40
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    You wouldn’t happen to be extracting to an NTFS or CIFS volume, would you? Commented Oct 16, 2023 at 18:21
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    @Martin Can you confirm the filesystem of your USB drive is indeed ext4 by running df -hT or lsblk -f. Did you try extracting the tar archive to a directory somewhere in $HOME/. The error seems to be due to the filesystem of your USB drive[1]. Try tar -xf <your tar archive> -C ~/Downloads/. [1]unix.stackexchange.com/questions/349914/… Commented Oct 17, 2023 at 3:29

1 Answer 1

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I solved this issue by booting into Windows 11 and opening the .tar.gz file and extracting the containing folder full of the files into the desktop (as a folder) and then running a PowerShell regex which removed all , and : from the filenames. Then moving these files back to the USB .

Then the files worked absolutely fine in all aspects on Zorin 16 (Ubuntu).

Maybe there was an issue with the USB filesystem not being the correct type, or perhaps the issue was the tarball was on the USB rather than the $HOME/ area. But either way; it worked perfectly once the : and/or , characters were removed.

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