How to Extract Files From a tar.bz2 or .tar.gz File on Linux

by | Jun 30, 2021 | Uncategorized

how to unzip a tar.gz file

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, it’s useful to explore other features.

How to “Unzip” or Extract a Tar.gz File on Windows

  1. While every tar.gz file is a .tar archive, not every .gz is a .tar file.
  2. In general, though, gzip and bzip2 are practically the same thing, and both will work similarly.
  3. It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping and unzipping them.
  4. You can do so by appending the -C switch to the end of the command.
  5. A file with just a .tar extension is uncompressed, but those will be very rare.

It’s the same as the archive creation command we used above, except the -x switch replaces the -c switch. This specifies you want to extract an archive instead of a beginners guide to becoming a crypto miner create one. The tar format is just a format, and it’s an open format, so it can be created by more than just one tool. This places all of the files in the archive neatly into the “newfiles” directory. On Linux, BSD, Illumos, and even Mac OS, the tar command is already installed for you. Looking in our Documents/Songs directory we’ll see the Guitar Songs directory has been created.

Extracting archives

Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently. In the shell, you can add a file or directory to a tar archive as long as it is not compressed. If your archive has been compressed, you must uncompress it, but you do not need to unarchive it. If we want to extract the files to a location other than the current directory, we can specify a target directory using the -C (specified directory) option.

Some third-party tools also offer extended flexibility for converting between file types‌, saving more time if you want to change between compression formats. For sending and storing, both .zip and .tar.gz files allows you to send relatively large packages as a single file. However, there are some pretty major differences when it comes to accessing data within the files and the compression efficiency. The command extracts files to a new directory how to purchase xlm called example1, which is located in the current directory.

Unzip Tar.gz Files Using the Command Line

The .gz or .bz2 extension suffix indicates that the archive has been compressed, using either the gzip or bzip2 compression algorithm. The tar command will work happily with both types of file, so it doesn’t matter which compression method was used — and it should be available everywhere you have a Bash shell. This error usually occurs when a .tar has been saved as a .gz despite having never been compressed using the gzip utility. It may sound like a silly mistake, but it’s surprisingly common in situations where users directly rename files and their extensions (such as .tar and .gz) in the process. With the command prompt open, use the appropriate commands to change the current working directory (cd) to the location of the .tar.gz file you want to unzip. Alternatively, you can also specify a source and destination file path when using the tar utility.

Most Linux and BSD desktops come with a graphical archive utility. So far we’ve just taken a leap of faith and extracted the files sight unseen. You can review the contents of a tar file before you extract it by using the -t (list) option. It is usually convenient to pipe the output through the less command. List the files in the directory with ls and you’ll see that a directory has been created called Ukulele Songs. It was contained in the tar file, and was extracted along with the files.

It’ll also compress every other directory inside a directory you specify — in other words, it works recursively. Files that have a .tar.gz or a .tar.bz2 extension are compressed archive files. A file with just a .tar extension is uncompressed, but those will be very rare. If the command line isn’t your thing, there are plenty of user-friendly tools available to unzip tar.gz files. If you 9 best crypto and bitcoin exchanges want to keep the original file after compression, there are two options.

how to unzip a tar.gz file

Once you’ve downloaded and installed 7-Zip, double-click on the tar.gz file that you’re trying to open, and then select “Choose an app on your PC” from the popup dialog that shows up. To unzip a tar.gz file on Windows, you can either download the 7zip archive utility or install Linux through the WSL. The former encodes your file in a sequential archive format suitable for magnetic tapes, while the latter compresses it to a smaller size. You’ll probably have to install the “other” tar (whatever that may be on your system) manually.

I use this option so that when I extract files from a tarbomb, they remain tidy and contained. To do this we’ll use almost exactly the same command as before but with one important difference. The .bz2 extension suffix tells us it has been compressed using the bzip2 command. Instead of using the-z (gzip) option, we will use the -j (bzip2) option to unzip the bz2 file.

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