You have to run it as a shell script, the meat of the data is encoded
after the __ARCHIVE_FOLLOWS__ line, the script decodes it and sends it
to tar to be extracted. Then it apparently runs the installer for you.

On Fri, Nov 29, 2024 at 3:15 PM Dick Steffens <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I've found a Linux version of Express Scribe transcription software.
> There is a file, scribe.tar.gz, the first several lines of which are:
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> #!/bin/sh
> echo ""
> echo "Please wait while installer is initialising....."
>
> # create a temp directory to extract to.
> export WRKDIR=`mktemp -d /tmp/selfextract.XXXXXX`
>
> SKIP=`awk '/^__ARCHIVE_FOLLOWS__/ { print NR + 1; exit 0; }' $0`
>
> # Take the TGZ portion of this file and pipe it to tar.
> tail -n +$SKIP $0 | tar xz -C $WRKDIR
>
> # execute the installation script
>
> PREV=`pwd`
> cd $WRKDIR
> ./install.sh $WRKDIR
>
>
> # delete the temp files
> cd $PREV
> rm -rf $WRKDIR
>
> exit 0
>
> __ARCHIVE_FOLLOWS__
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The rest of the file is a bunch of stuff I assume is code of some sort.
>
> When I try to extract it I get:
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> rsteff@ENU-2:~/Downloads/Scribe$ ls
> scribe
> rsteff@ENU-2:~/Downloads/Scribe$ tar -xvzf scribe
>
> gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
> tar: Child return status 1
> tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> What am I missing?
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Dick Steffens

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