Creating Tar files on a Windows XP box?

[Mark Conrad]

Hello!

I would like to use the ibun command, but first I have to create tar
files out of my collections. These files are currently located on a
Windows XP machine. I note from the ibun documentation that a number of
options must be set when creating a tar file for use with this command.
Can anyone recommend a good application that I could use on this
computer to create a tar file for use with the ibun command?

Thanks,

Mark

[Bing Zhu]

Mark,

Just like in UNIX, you need to use the 'tar' command to create a tar file
for your files or collections in Windows XP. In Windows platform, you can
download the 'Cygwin' software package that provides UNIX commands in
Windows platform and includes 'tar'. Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is free
software under GNU license.

Note that you just need to specify the folder (directory) name in using the
'-C' flag for 'tar' command to create a tar file using relative path. (The
example in our web page is for UNIX box and it shows the full path for the
directory to be tar-ed.)

Here is an example. Assume you have a folder called 'dirent', in which you
have files and sub folders, etc. You want to use 'ibun' for this folder.
Assume the full path for the 'dirent' is 'c:\lc\dirent'.

(1) First you need to make sure all 'dirent', its files, its subfolders,
etc, have read permission. You can do this using 'chmod' (also from Cygwin)
to change the permission for folders and files.
(2) tar the folder, upload it into iRODS, and use 'ibun'.
> cd c:\lc
> tar -lchf dirent.tar -C dirent .
> iput dirent.tar
> ibun -x dirent.tar dirent

Sincerely,
Bing