Un-taring a specific directory inside of a tar

tar zxvf alfresco-Nov19-2012.tar.gz --strip 1 alfresco/alf_data

or

 tar zxvf alfresco-Nov19-2012.tar.gz --strip = 1 alfresco/alf_data

To avoid the ssh login prompt delay

Create a file  named 'config' in .ssh/ with contents 'GSSAPIAuthentication=no'
ie
cat ~joseph/.ssh/config
GSSAPIAuthentication=no