Failing to extracting tgz file in Debian

Question

I am working with omnetpp and I want to run it in a Debian system (in my university) but when I type

tar xvfz omnetpp-4.2.2-src.tgz

I keep getting this error:

gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

When I do the same on my computer (ubuntu 12.04) there's absolutely no problem at all. I can't install new packages on the Debian system as I don't have root access.

Is there any possible solution for me here? Maybe a stand-alone program that might do the job? Thanks!

P.s. USB drives are not an option as they're not allowd access

Answer 1

First you should make sure your download is not corrupt. As it works on your home computer, consider the file as valid there. Do a md5sum omnetpp-4.2.2-src.tgz on both computers and check if they are the same. If not, your university download is corrupt. Simply download the file again there.

If the archive is the same, check whether gzip and tar have the same version on your box and on the university box:

• gzip --version
• tar --version

You then can consider to download gzip or tar on the university computer and compile the archives from source in order to use the binaries to extract the omnetpp archive.

Or, as only gzip seems to complain, you can uncompress the archive gzip -d on your home computer and email the tar archive to your university email account.