How To Extract and Unzip tar.gz Files for Linux & Windows

For this article, I want to demonstrate some of the common methods for archiving and compressing files using tar. For example, it goes without saying, that it is inadvisable to untar the whole large archive if you need for example to extract only a dingle file or main incentives of bitcoin mining a directory from it. To extract a single file, provide the path and the name of the file.

How to Extract or Unzip .tar.gz Files in Linux

Instead of using the-z (gzip) option, we will use the -j (bzip2) option to unzip the bz2 file. 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.

A “.tar” file is a collection of files compressed into a single file or investing in cryptocurrencies for beginners archive. Short for “Tape ARchive,” the name “TAR” is a throwback to when files were stored on magnetic tape drives. Then I used tar xvf (extract, verbose, file-archive) to unpack the contents here.

Tar stands for “tape archive” and refers to a practice from the earlier days of computing when data was backed up to tapes. Despite the nostalgic origin of the name, tar is very powerful and uses modern technologies to archive and compress files. The following article will help you to extract (unpack) and uncompress (untar) – tar, tar.gz and tar.bz2 files from the Linux command line. Notice that we don’t need to use the -z option to list the files.

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. 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.

If you’re not comfortable with the terminal or command line, third-party tools such as 7-Zip offer a more user-friendly alternative. In this example, the user tried to extract the file titled “FILE” from filename.tar.gz. 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.

You can use pokerstars accepts bitcoin litecoin ether and xrp via neteller the -t option (instead of -c) to view the contents of an archive file. This works the same whether the file is compressed or not. It will list the actual file size, not the compressed size. While tar itself cannot compress files, you can use one of the common compression algorithms to compress the files while creating a tarball. I’ll show you how to do that later in this basic tar tutorial.

The tar command is extremely powerful, and you can do things like list or search for files in a tar archive, or extract a single file. And now you can use the 7-Zip File Manager to open, view, or extract files from tar.gz and other archives. If you want a specific file, you can drill down into the folder, or you can simply click the “Extract” button and choose a location to put all the files.

Just like the more familiar .zip files, .tar files compress large files into a single package, making it easier to store and send them through email, servers, and so on. As a result, it has become a common file extension for many open-source software packages and other resources. You’ll want to replace “tarfile” with the path to the tar.gz file that you’re trying to extract. For a more detailed explanation on how the tar command works, be sure to read our guide to compressing and extracting files in the Linux Terminal.

Untar tar, tar.gz, tar.bx2 Files

If you want to keep the original file after compression, there are two options. The first is the -k option, and the other uses the -c option to output the compressed file to a different file, preserving the original. After reading this article, you know how to extract or unzip .tar.gz file in Linux using different methods and tools. It also integrates with the Windows Explorer context menu, which enables users to create and extract archives directly from the right-click menu.

1. Gzip compression uses a checksum to make sure data integrity.
2. It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping and unzipping them.
3. If you are looking for additional helpful solutions, you might want to check out this right mouse click open files as root article.
4. So let’s break things down into smaller pieces before combining several options in the examples.

Tar stands for “tape archive” and is GNU software originally developed for backing up data to tape drives. It is still used today for consolidating and compressing data. Archives created with tar are typically saved with a .tar extension and can also be compressed to save space, resulting in files like .tar.gz or .tar.bz2. Though both .zip and .tar.gz archive and compress files, they do so in different ways. In other words, .zip is a collection of compressed files, while .tar.gz is a compressed collection of files.

Method 2: Using WinRAR

Here is a complete list of the documents that will be used. For more information and to schedule a live demo, contact a hosting expert from Kinsta today. Once you choose the directory, click the Select button in the top right corner.

Run the info tar command at the shell to view the tar command’s detailed information page. Press the q key to quit the information page when you’re done. If the file is a bzip2-compressed file, replace the “z” in the above commands with a “j”.

In other words, .zip files are a collection of compressed files, while .tar files are a compressed collection of files. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as gzip. Gzip is one of the most popular and available options, especially since it comes built in to most Linux distributions and macOS.

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. Again, the above command extracts to the current working directory by default.