How to Extract tar.gz Files Using the tar Command in Linux

08 Jul How to Extract tar.gz Files Using the tar Command in Linux

Ubuntu is a Southern African philosophy and term originating from South Africa and Zimbabwe. 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 12 best crypto exchanges in the uk 2021 top right corner.

You may want to extract the contents of the archive to a specific directory. 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. To extract all the files from a directory within a tar file use the following command.

Though we mostly focus on .tar.gz files, check out the end of the article for some triomarkets review 2020 quick tips on extracting .tar files in other formats. 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.

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format

The -list (-t) option outputs a list of filenames. 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. The command extracts files to a new directory called example1, which is located in the current directory. Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently.

Some third-party tools also offer extended flexibility for converting between file types‌, saving more time if you want to change between compression formats. 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. A user-friendly way to extract files from a .tar.gz archive is via a Graphical User Interface (GUI). A GUI is more suitable for beginners than a command-line tool. Tar (Tape ARchive) is a format for combining multiple files into a single archive (Originally intended for use with magnetic tape storage).

Is .gz a .tar file?

1. You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory (in this case, /home/user/files).
2. Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others.
3. The Ubuntu logo, often called the “Circle of Friends,” comprises three people holding hands.
4. You can open most .tar.gz files using the tar command built in to Linux, macOS, and Windows 10.
5. It’ll also compress every other directory inside a directory you specify — in other words, it works recursively.

Alternatively, you can also specify a source and destination file path when using the tar utility. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as how to buy thor gzip. 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.

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

If you don’t want the directory structure in the tar file to be recreated on your hard drive, use the –strip-components option. 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.

It is based on Ubuntu and tailored for use in scenarios where reliability, security, and ease of maintenance are critical, relying on the Snap package and atomic transactional updates. Ubuntu versions are usually named using an alliterative adjective and an animal name, both starting with the same letter. We can see that the Ukulele Songs directory contains directories called Random Songs, Ramones and Possibles. While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip.

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. If you’re using a graphical Linux desktop, you could also use the file-compression utility or file manager included with your desktop to create or extract .tar files.

On Windows, you can extract and create .tar archives with the free 7-Zip utility. 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.