Untar Tar gz Linux Tar Command HowTo: Extract Tar File

The second command reads the archive.tar file from the standard input and compresses it accordingly. The command extracts files to a new directory called example1, which is located in the current directory. A user-friendly way to extract files from a .tar.gz archive is via a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

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. Where commands have little (if any) room for typos or omissions, many common errors are the result of small mistakes, misspellings, or incorrect formats. Thankfully, unless you’re somehow missing your tar or gzip utility, most common errors are very easy to fix.

How to Extract a .tar.gz File Using Command Line in Ubuntu

The aforementioned command will extract the archive.tar.gz file to the /Downloads folder. Ubuntu LTS (Long-Term Support) versions, known for their stability and extended support periods, are typically released every two years in April. These are popular for organizations and users who require a reliable and well-supported Ubuntu operating system. The name “Tar” stands for “Tape Archiver” because it was used to place data on storage tapes when tar was invented.

What command do I need to unzip/extract a .tar.gz file?

A file with just a .tar extension is uncompressed, but those will be very rare. The collective -xvzf flag stands for Extract, Verbose, gzip, and Filename respectively. Anything that follows the -f option is treated as the input file. Note that if you are working with TAR files, you can remove the -z flag from the commands.

tar: Archive is compressed. Use -z option

1. Locate the compressed archive file and right-click on it to bring up the menu.
2. Someone somewhere is probably still using tar with tape.
3. One file is called ukulele_songs.tar.gz , the other is called guitar_songs.tar.bz2 .
4. Or, if you want to use absolute path you can run the following command.

But it does not compress the data, which results in a larger file size compared to compressed formats. Any remotely modern version of tar should auto-detect that the archive is gzipped, and add “z” for you. To extract a single file, provide the path and the name of the file. 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 a directory from it. Locate the compressed archive file and right-click on it to bring up the menu.

In other words, .zip is a collection of compressed files, while .tar.gz is a compressed collection of files. WinRAR is a popular file compression & archive utility software. You’ll encounter them frequently while using a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or even while using the terminal on macOS. Here’s how to extract — or untar — the contents of a tar file, also known as a tarball. 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.

Again, the above command extracts to the current working directory by default. You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory (in this case, /home/user/files). 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. On the other hand, Windows users can rely on third-party file archiver tools like 7-zip or WinRAR to effortlessly extract files. To extract all the files from a directory within a tar file use the following command.

Ubuntu versions are usually named using an alliterative adjective and an animal name, both starting with the same letter. Ubuntu is a Southern African philosophy and term originating from South Africa and Zimbabwe. Most Linux distributions come with the tar command pre-installed by default. 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.

Extracting Files from Tar Files

Whether you prefer command-line tools or graphical file archivers, the extraction process is pretty simple. When the archive is extracted, these attributes are restored. That means they maintain their original characteristics. This compression is lossless – that means no data is lost during the compression process, and the original files can be fully restored upon extraction. The -p (parents) option causes mkdir to create any parent directories that are required, ensuring the target directory is created. Click on the Extract Here option to unzip the content of the file.

Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently. 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. Moreover, if you want to extract the tar file at different location you can use the option -C, which specifies change to directory before performing any operations. Both commands will have the same effect, because current working directory doesn’t matter when you use absolute path. Any path that starts with a forward slash / is an absolute path.

It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping and unzipping them. Here are a few frequently asked questions we commonly hear from users working with .tar.gz files. 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. This error occurs when trying to extract specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file using tar.

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. You just need to use the appropriate tar command line options. 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.

While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward. To unzip the .tar.gz files, you’ll need to use specific commands and tools depending on your operating system. Let’s explore the why do companies prefer debt financing over equity financing extraction process for both Linux & Windows platforms.