Somewhere I read about copying a module in tar zip or gz form into the root of the site and then having a piece of php code unpack it. I have searched high and low but can't find it again, can anybody help please?

The issue came up when I messed a site and wanted to rebuild it. I had a tar of the site which I could ftp up to it, but had no way of unpacking it once there (no shell access!).

I think the article I saw was installation instructions for a module, and it said ftp the packed module up to the site and then gave the code for a php file that would unpack it. I would love to be able to that, waiting for ftp to reload a whole site calls for patience on a monument.

best wishes

Adrian

I believe you can do this if you run CPanel on your server - but I've not seen any XOOPS code to do this... it doesn't mean that there is not a way of course.

Have you tried looking at hotscripts.com? That's the sort of thing they normally have.

My only comment about decompressing on the server is that you need to be careful about file permissions if you create archives on a PC.

I remember being amazed how fast a TAR file de-compressed in-situ, so I TARRED a site on my PC to test it. This appears not to be a good idea, as when I de-compressed the archive on my UNIX server, I wound up with several hundred files that I didn't have permission to edit... or delete!.

If I recall, I had to upload a mirror directory structure using FTP to over-write the originals before I could do anything.

In cPanel, when you click on a tar.gz or tgz file, it gives you the option to unpack. That's how I do it. CPanel didn't use to be able to unpack zip files, though. I don't know if it still has this problem or not, as I always convert zip files to tar.gz format with IZArc (freeware) before I upload them because it makes them much smaller.

Do you have cPanel?

Jere

Many thanks for this to all three of you.

My hosting supplier determines the control panel I use and doesn't allow me access above the public_html folder, so I don't think I can install cPanel. I suspect that what they supply is a version based on cPanel; it will produce a .tgz file with a .tar of the site and a dump of the MySQL database inside (which is quite nice), but they don't allow me to unpack it back. They say next version will.......

Thanks for the tip about hotscripts, I have had a quick look, and I need to spend some time as there are a lot of scripts to sort through!

In the meantime, if you come across anything, please let me know.

Appologies for the delay in ackowledging your posts, but for some reason I didn't get the notifications (could it the d..n spam filter again?)

Best wishes

Adrian

Sounds like you might need a new host that offers you better control of your own site. You could look around Webhostingtalk.com for ideas or ask others whom they are using. I have been using resellerzoom.com/hostingzoom.com for several years, now, and have been very pleased. They offer cPanel, which is my preferred control panel.

Jere