[Mailman-Users] really dumb question on getting started; extracting archive

[Holmes, Deb]

How do you unzip the .tar and .gz files prior to install?   For most
applications that I'm running on my unix based web server, my process is to
unzip on my Windows XP box prior to uploading to the web server.  I know
basically nothing about unix except how to post files and write simple .cgi
code. I'm wanting to install mailman in conjunction with a WordPress plug-in
and am pretty much expecting that between WordPress and the WP mailman plug
in I won't need to know very much about the unix stuff underneath.  But the
archive format has me stumped before I even get out the gate.  

 

I searched the FAQ on "extract" and "unzip" and found nothing on point.  I
searched the archives for this mailing list and found 3 other people with
the same question but none of the answers were helpful.  

One person suggested http://www.gzip.org, but that web page states that the
solution for unzipping on a windows machine is to use winzip:

"To extract .tar and .tar.gz files on Windows 9x/NT/2000/ME/XP use
<http://www.sfsu.edu/ftp/win/utils/> PowerArchiver 6.1 (freeware) or
<http://www.7-zip.org> 7-zip (freeware) or  <http://www.winzip.com> Winzip
(commercial)."

Winzip says the file format of the files downloaded from SourceForge isn't
valid.  Specifically the error when I try to extract mailman-2.1.10b1.tgz.gz
is "invalid directory"

And when I try to extract mailman-2.1.10b1.tar I get "Error reading header
after processing 0 entries"

 

 

Another respondent suggested the GNU installation manual , but those
instructions go from this:
2.2 Create the installation directory 

You are now ready to configure and install the Mailman software. 

To this 

SECTION0013100000000000000003.1 Run configure

Usually you can just cd to the directory you unpacked the Mailman source
tarball into, and run configure with no arguments:

Without ever stopping to say how to unpack the file.   

I'm sure it's obvious to those with passing familiarity with unix, but if
its that easy it couldn't hurt to enumerate the steps could it?

Thanks, in advance!