How to Extract or Unzip tar.gz Files in Linux
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If you’re not comfortable with the terminal or command line, third-party tools such as 7-Zip offer a more user-friendly alternative. It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping https://www.crypto-trading.info/ and unzipping them. Here are a few frequently asked questions we commonly hear from users working with .tar.gz files. This error occurs when trying to extract specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file using tar.
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The output shows a newly created archive example1.tar.gz. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Uncover your website’s performance bottlenecks to deliver a better user experience.
In this guide, you will learn how to extract or unzip .tar.gz files in Linux. Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently. Similar to the previous error, this error occurs when an archive was saved as a .tar despite not being a .tar archive. If you want to keep the original file after compression, there are two options.
What’s The Difference Between .tar and .tar.gz Files?
The -list (-t) option will output a list of filenames. The tar command also provides support for extracting only specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file. Simply add a space-separated list of the files you want to extract. Again, the above commands will extract to the current working directory by default.
For sending and storing, both .zip and .tar.gz files will allow 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. 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.
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. But with .zip being the easier of the two to use, why use .tar in the first place? As we’ll see in the next section, .tar comes with a few extra features that make it the better compression format for certain files and applications. A “.tar” file is a collection of files compressed into a single file or archive.
- In other words, .zip files are a collection of compressed files, while .tar files are a compressed collection of files.
- Again, the above commands will extract to the current working directory by default.
- It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping and unzipping them.
- The action you just performed triggered the security solution.
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. As we’ll see later, different compression utilities may require different methods for extracting and unzipping files.
.tar vs .zip
Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others. Since .tar.gz compresses multiple files all at once, it can take advantage of similarities between individual files to save on space. 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.
Though we’ll mostly focus on .tar.gz files, check out the end of the article for some quick tips on extracting .tar files in other formats. Where .zip files consist of many individually compressed files, .tar files are compressed as a single package, leaving its files uncompressed. In other words, .zip files are a collection of compressed files, while .tar files are a compressed collection of files.
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. If you have a file on your PC or Mac that ends with .TAR, it’s an archive file that typically contains one or more files or folders that need to be unpacked. Whether or not your TAR file is compressed, it’s super easy to unpack and open the files and directories on macOS, Windows, and Linux. We’ll show you the easiest ways to open TAR, TGZ, and TAR.GZ files on any PC or Mac. You can open most .tar.gz files using the tar command built in to Linux, macOS, and Windows 10.
Troubleshooting Common Errors
While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward. Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you’ll 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. Most Linux distributions and macOS include built-in tools for zipping and unzipping .tar and .tar.gz files. While the tar utility is enough for most purposes, you’ll need the gzip utility to create .tar.gz files.
Is .gz a .tar File?
The command extracts files to a new directory called example1, which is located in the current directory. Open the 7-Zip program https://www.topbitcoinnews.org/ and navigate to your tar file. While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip.
Only Extract Specific Files or Directories From .tar.gz in Linux
As a result, one isn’t necessarily better than the other — it’s all a matter of application. This error occurs if you try to decompress a file without specifying a decompression utility, specifically -z for gzip. Some third-party tools also offer extended flexibility for converting between file types, saving more time if you want to change between compression formats. https://www.bitcoin-mining.biz/ With the command prompt open, use the appropriate commands to change the current working directory (cd) to the location of the .tar.gz file you want to unzip. Alternatively, you can also specify a source and destination file path when using the tar utility. It’s often useful to list the contents of a .tar.gz file without having to unzip the entire archive.