I'm having difficulty with tar on a headless Ubuntu Server 12:

ubuntu@domU-12-31-39-02-C0-98:~$ wget -o dropbox.tar.gz ""
ubuntu@domU-12-31-39-02-C0-98:~$ tar -xzvf dropbox.tar.gz
gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

If I download the file on Windows, I can unpack it with 7-zip just fine. What am I doing wrong with tar?

1 Answer

The -o option of wget specifies where to put the log file.

You'll find that your dropbox.tar.gz is a plain text file containing diagnostic messages from wget.

Try this:

wget -O dropbox.tar.gz ""

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