"Cannot open: Permission denied" when creating a tar file

I need to to create a archive from my ftp server (all of the /usr/src/ directory) using tar command. However I keep getting permission denied error. Here is step by step what I am doing:

canserhan@embserv:~$ cd /usr/src/
canserhan@embserv:/usr/src$ ls
kernel-headers-2.6.8-2 linux rtlinux-3.2-pre3
kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-386 linux-2.4.21 rtlinux3.2-move
kernel-kbuild-2.6-3 linux-2.6.9-rtlfree
kernel-source-2.6.8.tar.bz2 rtlinux
canserhan@embserv:/usr/src$ tar cvf rtl_archive.tar /usr/src/
tar: rtl_archive.tar: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
canserhan@embserv:/usr/src$ 

What I am doing wrong? Seems like the problem is with my output archive file. But I could not exactly figure out what should I do.

1 Answer

The problem is that you are executing the command inside /usr/src to which you do not have write permissions with your credentials. Therefore you do not have write permissions for the .tar file you are trying to create. Use tar cvf /tmp/rtl_archive.tar /usr/src to create a tar-file where writing is possible.

Generally you can give any path that you have write access to, such as:

tar cvf $HOME/rtl_archive.tar /usr/src

to create the .tar file in.