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

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. This command extracts (-x) the file (-f) specified (in this case, filename.tar.gz) to the current directory. Note that this command also works with other common compression formats such as .tar.bz2. You will learn how to list the contents of a tar archive without unpacking it and how to extract only a single file or a single directory.

How to Extract or Unzip a tar.gz File in Linux using GUI Tools

Some of the most popular archive managers for Linux are File Roller, Ark, Xarchiver, and PeaZip. They offer more features and options than the file managers, such as creating, modifying, encrypting, and splitting archives. You can install them from your distribution’s package manager or software center. If you want to see the progress of the extraction, you can use the -v option, which makes the tar command more verbose and prints the names of the files being extracted. If you don’t want the directory structure in the tar file to be recreated on your hard drive, use the –strip-components option.

Let’s explore the extraction process for both Linux & Windows platforms. 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. Like the tar utility, gzip also allows you to zip and unzip multiple files or entire directories at a time. Note that this command will throw an error unless you specify the exact filename listed in the .tar file. As we cover more in the next section, you can verify file names by listing contents with the tar -tf filename.tar.gz command. For sending and storing, both .zip and .tar.gz files allows you to send relatively large packages as a single file.

However, tar was unable to find FILE within .tar.gz, meaning that the user either misspelled the name or that the file simply doesn’t exist in filename.tar.gz. Another common cause of errors is case sensitivity, where Linux treats “FILE” and “file” as two separate entities. If the command line isn’t your thing, there are plenty of user-friendly tools available to unzip tar.gz files. But with .zip being the easier of the two to use, why use .tar in the first place? The next section shows how .tar comes with a few extra features that make it the better compression format for certain files and applications. Thankfully, you don’t need to be a 1960s computer technician to use and extract .tar files – nor do modern .tar files even have anything to do with old computers.

Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you need to use the tar utility through the command line. However, there are also many third-party tools you can install for a more user-friendly experience. It’s often useful to list the contents of a .tar.gz file without having to unzip the entire archive. Technical details aside, all you need to remember is that .zip files are more accessible but less space-efficient, while .tar files are less accessible but more space-efficient. As a result, one isn’t necessarily better than the other — it’s all a matter of application.

How to install Node.js and npm on Windows, macOS, and Linux

You also learned how to list the contents of a tar.gz file and how to create your own tar.gz archives. In this article, you will learn how to extract or unzip tar.gz files in Linux using the tar command and other tools. You will also learn how to list the contents of a tar.gz file and how to create your own tar.gz archives. WinRAR is a popular file compression & archive utility software.

How to Unzip .tar.gz in Linux using tar

Notice that we don’t need to use the -z option to list the files. We only need to add the -z option when we’re extracting files from a .tar.gz file. Likewise, we don’t need the -j option to list the files in a tar.bz2 file. This error occurs if you try to decompress a file without specifying a decompression utility, specifically -z for gzip. This error occurs when trying to extract specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file using tar.

Unzip TAR and TAR.GZ Files With 7-Zip

This simplifies file management and reduces the risk of data loss during transfers. Once you choose the directory, click the Select button in the top right corner. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

To do so, simply pass the file names with the default command. The -so and -si flags denote Standard Output and Standard Input. The first part of the command writes the archive.tar file to the standard output. The second command reads the archive.tar file from the standard input and compresses it accordingly.

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.

The –strip-components option requires a numerical parameter. The number represents how many levels of directories to ignore. Files from the ignored directories are still extracted, but the directory structure is not replicated on your hard drive.

As a result, it has become a common file extension for many open-source software packages and other resources. When you want to share multiple files with someone else, compressing those files into a single TAR archive is the most efficient solution. Apart from occupying less space on your system storage, compressed archives utilize less server bandwidth when downloaded by multiple users. The .tar portion of the file extension stands for tape archive, and is the reason that both of these file types are called tar files. Tar files date all the way back to 1979 when the tar command was created to allow system administrators to archive files onto tape.

How to Extract or Unzip a tar.gz File in Linux

1. Click on the Extract Here option to unzip the content of the file.
2. Similar to the previous error, this error occurs when an archive was saved as a .tar despite not being a .tar archive.
3. If the directory does not exist, tar will create it automatically.
4. From videos to entire software packages, many files are compressed and stored using the .tar.gz format.

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. Again, the above command extracts to the current working directory by default. You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory why cost of debt is calculated after tax (in this case, /home/user/files). Of course, that’s not to say .tar files are some kind of “lesser” format than .zip.

To extract all the files from a directory within a tar file use the following command. Note that the path is wrapped in quotation marks because there are spaces in the path. If we list the files in the Download directory we will see that another directory called Guitar Songs has been created. Files that have a .tar.gz or a .tar.bz2 extension are compressed archive files.

To do that, you can use the tar command with the -t option, which lists the contents of an archive without extracting it. You also need to use the -z option to tell tar that the archive is compressed with gzip, and the -f option to specify the file name. While every tar.gz file is a .tar archive, not every .gz is a .tar file. The .gz extension represents the gzip compression format, which can be applied to almost any file format to compress data and save space. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as gzip.