This Linux Mint is kinda short when you do right clicks, there's no extract option on a right click when hovering over unetbootin. How do you extract from something when there is no .tar or .zip or whatever? I've got unetbootin in the Downloads folder, so if there is a CLI command to extract, I'd appreciate knowing about it. I can't find anything on the net nor in my Linux Bible.

Do you have gzip?

Clik

{I have downloaded p7zip, which the instructions said to use ......}
{Just checked, I don't have gzip ....... }

Sorry, I was doing that from my new antiX-base install - now I'm on the LM7 and it does have gzip

I used gparted to format my USB drive, and there was no option for a vfat filesystem, only fat 32 - yet when I try to mount my USB (for some reason it won't automount like it did with LMDE) it tells me that fat32 is an unknown filesystem. Is there a command that I can use to remove the fat32 and change the filesystem to vfat?

JP, I am really surprised that you do not have gzip on your system. If you have a GNU tar implementation on your system, chances are it has some kind of zip included with it. Most systems that have a full set of utilities include compress and uncompress, but they also include zip and unzip, usually in the form of gzip and gunzip, which frequently are bundled with GNU Tar as well.

If you are using a Debian based system that does not directly include these packages, they are MOST CERTAINLY included in the Debian repositories, so they are a click away!

I installed it from the repos, so it's there now. I've finally got it extracted (I don't know how I did it, I started all over and skipped the extract part and away we went!). I'm having another difficulty right now, but I'm working on it. Soon, I hope to have Mepis on here and then I can start building the antiX core into a custom, like you show on your blog!

Good deal; hope that takes care of your concern. Drop me a note if there are issues. One thing our forum usually does not include is Email for various threads. There are advantages to that - less excess Email, but disadvantages, too. If you miss a day here, you may miss something where someone is asking a relevant question. I've been busy lately, so I've missed several conversations until days later...

It's all taken care of now, I finally installed antiX base, and when I did, for some reason the extract option showed up on the LM7, so I was able to finish the USB bootable Mepis drive. I also downloaded gparted and burned a live disk of that, saved all of my files on the 5Gb storage partition to CD,and used the gparted disk to wipe out all the different partitions out and start over on a clean hard drive. Now, I have a 50MB partition for a persistant Grub (next project ) 1.5Gb parttition for swap, 5Gb partition for antiX core custom (thanks for the easy-to-follow tutorial), and a 30Gb partition for Mepis. It was a Sunday job and everything is working fine so far. After playing with the antiX install for a while, I may make some changes, and then start over with a clean install again .... we'll see! That was the most fun I've had since trying the Arch install, which went very smoothly, IIRC.

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!
JP

My pleasure, JP. Glad that all is well now.

A technique I use with one of the archive tools, "tar", is to pipe the contents of one file system to another. I can use this to backup a system, to restore a system, or to copy certain files, a group of files, a directory, or even a file system, from one location (internal or external) to another.

The basic syntax is:

(cd src && tar -cf - .) | (cd dest && tar -xpf -)

Even better, I found an article online that breaks all of this down nicely; I hope that it is helpful:

http://blog.extracheese.org/2010/05/the-tar-pipe.html

Put this in your .bashrc file...

Your extract routine is a handy one; thanks Dave! :-)

Keep in mind readers that you still need to have the various tools and utilities installed on your system in order for the bash extract module to work. Some distributions have packages with names like binutils that install some of the packages. Other stuff, like 7z compression utilities, usually come from elsewhere, and the details may vary, depending on the distribution and the specific archive format being used. If you review the utility packages you have either installed or available, it's generally possible to obtain tools that can support any of the formats that Dave has scripted above.

If you can't figure it out, let us know which system you are using and as much as you can about what is installed, and we'll work with you to figure it out and get it right.

My last download of Unetbootin (about July 4, 2016, direct from https://unetbootin.github.io/) was a single file executable, sent with permissions stripped back. I only had to chmod 770 and then Unetbootin worked just fine, although the graphics were a bit Windows 3.1-ish.

A few "take away" comments from the overall discussion:

1. IF you are planning to perform any archive or extract functions on files with any of the extensions listed in Dave's script, make sure you have at least the minimal number of programs available to perform the tasks. To me, I'd want to see GNU tar installed, as well as gzip (which should also include gunzip), and as you can see, the list really ought to include: tar, bunzip2, unrar, (un)compress, as well as the 7zip and traditional zip and unzip. No need for these unless you are actually going to use them, but what about the cases where you don't usually use or need such tools, except "in an emergency"? I'd at least keep a "tool-based" distribution, maybe a "Swiss Army Knife" distribution like KNOPPIX available on DVD or USB to cover those special cases.

2. When you want to run any kind of program, typically that program should have "the executable bit - 'x'" enabled. File permissions such as 700, 750, or 755 allow execution by the user, user and group, or user, group and world, and the chmod command will add the permissions necessary. A chmod +x followed by the filename is one way to do it, but that may not provide the correct permission grade on certain system files, where, for security purposes, only user (with that user usually root or another privileged account) is granted executable access, and in some cases, that privileged account gets the ONLY access. Read and research to make sure that you understand what these statements mean and imply. (NO group or world access is allowed when restricted access must be maintained).