Gzip is one of the most popular and available options, especially since it comes built in to most Linux distributions and macOS. As we see later, different compression utilities may require different methods for extracting and unzipping files. Though we mostly focus on .tar.gz files, check out the end of the article for some quick tips on extracting .tar files in other formats. 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.
Popular SSH Commands for WordPress Users to Start Using
You can do so by appending the -C switch to the end of the command. For example, the following command will extract the contents of the archive.tar.gz file to the /tmp directory. A GZ file is nothing but a file compressed using the gzip algorithm. You can use the official GNU gzip utility to extract the content of the compressed archive file. If the file you’re looking at is a TAR.GZ, how to buy and sell nem xem in the uk using either tar or 7-Zip to extract the file will be a much simpler choice. The extraction method is precisely the same for tar files that have compression, such as.tar.gz,.tar.bz2, and others.
- The .gz extension represents the gzip compression format, which can be applied to almost any file format to compress data and save space.
- The system will extract all the files to your current directory by default.
- On Linux, there are multiple ways to unzip compressed archives.
- It just bundles files & directories together while preserving their file structure and metadata.
Once you choose the directory, click the Select button in the top right corner.
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. On bitcoin mining explained the other hand, Windows users can rely on third-party file archiver tools like 7-zip or WinRAR to effortlessly extract files. In Linux, users have multiple ways to extract .tar.gz files – through the terminal and graphical file archivers. Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently. It’s often useful to list the contents of a .tar.gz file without having to unzip the entire archive.
Extract Files from a .tar.gz via GUI
Whether you prefer command-line tools or graphical file archivers, the extraction process is pretty simple. This compression is lossless – that means no data is lost during the compression process, and the original files can be fully restored upon extraction. But it does not compress the data, which results in a larger file size compared to compressed formats.
tar: Archive is compressed. Use -z option
Tar files date all the way back to 1979 when the tar command was created to allow system administrators to archive files onto tape. Forty years later we are still using the tar command to extract tar files on to our hard drives. Someone somewhere is probably still using tar with tape.
DEB is the native and most common package format Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions use. It contains compiled binaries, libraries, configuration files, and metadata required to install and manage software on a Ubuntu system. Sometimes you need to view the content of a tar file as it collects many files and ensures if a specific file is present. The command includes a large number of additional options, so we can’t possibly list them all here.
To extract a single file, provide the path and the name of the file. The -p (parents) option causes mkdir to create any parent directories that are required, ensuring the target directory is created. As the files are extracted, they are listed in the terminal window. Any remotely modern version of tar should auto-detect that the archive is gzipped, and add “z” for you.
Note that if you are working with TAR files, you can remove the -z flag from the commands. 7-Zip is a free and open-source tool with high compression ratios & supports a wide range of archive formats. It offers AES-256 encryption to protect sensitive data within archives. Users can utilize the 7-zip command-line interface for automated & bitcoin price prediction forecast scripted extraction tasks. Again, the above command extracts to the current working directory by default.
current community
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. This example uses example1.tar.gz in the Home directory. The output shows a newly created archive example1.tar.gz. Similar to the previous error, this error occurs when an archive was saved as a .tar despite not being a .tar archive. However, while tools like 7-Zip are free, many more “robust” solutions are only available for a price after a trial period. As a result, we recommend sticking to free (but trustworthy) tools or simply using the command line.
The GNU tar command included with Linux distributions has integrated compression. It can create a .tar archive and then compress it with gzip or bzip2 compression in a single command. That’s why the resulting file is a .tar.gz file or .tar.bz2 file. Where commands have little (if any) room for typos or omissions, many common errors are the result of small mistakes, misspellings, or incorrect formats.
You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory (in this case, /home/user/files). Of course, that’s not to say .tar files are some kind of “lesser” format than .zip. Rather, they both accomplish the same task (file compression) in the same way. People new to the .tar format usually equate it to a .zip archive, but a tar archive is not compressed. Tar collected all the files into one package, but the files can be compressed with separate utilities. You may want to extract the contents of the archive to a specific directory.