Encrypting a tarball

[tuxxman]

I have quite a few log files i need to tarball, encrypt, and copy the files to a usb thumb drive.
I do:

tar -cf file.tar <directory where files are>

gpg -e -r "<my user>" file.tar

that all works fine, and i get file.tar.gpg...
but when i try to decrypt the file later by doing:

gpg -d file.tar.gpg

It spits out:

2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c1;2c

over and over and over again
I have no idea why its doing this...any ideas?

[dehonw]

Try looking in the man pages for reference. You should get a better result by using gpg --decrypt-files file.tar.gpg and entering the passphrase.

Good hunting!

Trying looking in the man pages for reference, in the meantime use the switch --decrypt-files with gpg and that should get you where you need to be. The -d reference you are using may be old/outdated. If you don't have man pages use the net for the version of the command you are using.

[emperor559]

You need to use the -o or --output option for gpg to output it to a file