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I'm trying to install JavaSE on a OpenWrt (Pandorabox) device. When I run 

tar -xvf ejdk-8u65-linux-arm-sflt.tar.gz

I get tar: invalid tar magic. How can I solve this problem?

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    Perhaps that version of tar doesn't automatically recognize gzip files, try adding -z to the command
    – Eric Renouf
    Dec 14, 2015 at 19:45

2 Answers 2

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The version of tar on OpenWRT is a smaller one than the one on full-blown systems, designed to fit small devices (it's BusyBox.) To keep small, it lacks features such as the automatic detection of compressed archives.

Try declaring the compression format manually with the -z option:

tar -xvzf ejdk-8u65-linux-arm-sflt.tar.gz

Support for gzip in the tar utility is an optional feature that may or may not be enabled on OpenWRT. If you don't have it, call zcat (or gzip -dc) explicitly:

zcat ejdk-8u65-linux-arm-sflt.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
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    Both commands stopped when extracting: ejdk1.8.0_65/linux_arm_sflt/jre/lib/rt.jar with another tar: invalid tar magic
    – Toc
    Dec 14, 2015 at 20:03
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    @Toc Are you sure the file is undamaged and compete? Were there any other errors? Do you have a URL for the file so we can check?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Dec 14, 2015 at 20:16
  • oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/embedded-se/downloads/… Unfortunately I had to register to download the file (whose name is in the opening question). Thank you.
    – Toc
    Dec 14, 2015 at 20:56
  • Using a zip utility in Windows I recognized that rt.jar is the last file in the tar archive. Maybe the invalid tar magic message is only an irrelevant warning?
    – Toc
    Dec 14, 2015 at 21:03
  • @Toc Damn. Sorry, I'm not going to create an account for this. Does rt.jar have the right size after extraction? This message indicates that something about the format of the tar file isn't supported, but this may well be harmless trailing garbage.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Dec 14, 2015 at 21:18
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I had the same problem when extracting an archive, finally I upgraded tar and it solved the problem.

opkg update
opkg upgrade tar
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