Extracting tar, gzip, bzip2, z

Sometimes you need to extract some files on Linux console. Here  some examples how to do that.

tar

Tar archives are the most common way of distributing bundles of files under Linux or UNIX. A .tar file is simply a bundle of files packaged with GNU tar program. To extract such files use following:

tar xf somearchive.tar
tar xvf somearchive.tar

• Provide option f if you want to extract content of files. Tar (from tape archive) has long history and was intended to work with tape media, so when you omit f tar tries to work with tape device.
• v- stands for verbose. List all the files by extract process.
• x- Extract command

Before extracting you may be interested in Looking inside of tar. Do it with option “t” :

tar tf archive.tar

For more tar parameters see Man pages.

gzip

Often tar-files are also compressed. One of the most known compressed formats is GNU Zip (gzip).  Tar bundeld and zipped file would  normally  have extension .tar.gz. To extract such files you can use tar with  “z” option, which causes tar to automatically invoke gzip. Modify abow example  and you get able to extract tar.gz  files too.

tar -xzf somearchive.tar.gz

In old tar version the “z” option is may be not available. In that case just use UNIX pipes:

gzip -dc target.tar.gz | tar xf -

Meaning of gzip options

• d – Do decompress!
• c – write to console (So that tar can take it from there )
• t – Tests file integrity
• l – lists archive file information

You will find more on Man pages.

bzip2

Sometimes you can find files ending with .tar.bz2. That are files packaged with bzip (a block-sorting file compressor). Use it like gzip

tar xjvf filename.tar.bz2

Options d,c,t have the same meaning. More on Man pages.

zcat

Some files have .tar.Z endings. They can be extracted by

zcat somearchive.tar.Z | tar xf -

Look in Man pages for more.

Any questions? You are welcome to comment!