Now you know how to untar a tar.gz file in Linux. Perhaps you might also be interested in learning how to unzip files in Linux. Sometimes you need to view the content of a tar file as it collects many files and ensures if a specific file is present. After reading this article, you know how to extract or unzip .tar.gz file in Linux using different methods and tools.

The name “Tar” stands for “Tape Archiver” because it was used to place data on storage tapes when tar was invented. The tar program takes one or more files and “wraps” them into a self-contained file. This example uses example1.tar.gz in the Home directory.

If you are into coding or just downloading a package from Github, you may come across the TAR.GZ file extension. Popular with Linux users, the TAR.GZ format (TGZ) is often used to package collections of files into a single downloadable. DEB https://www.cryptominer.services/ is the native and most common package format Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions use. It contains compiled binaries, libraries, configuration files, and metadata required to install and manage software on a Ubuntu system.

To open such a package, you need to decompress the gzip and extract the resulting tarball. Some utilities can open TGZ files in one step, others in two. Like many archive and compression formats, .tar.gz is an effective way to save storage space and make it easier to send large amounts of data. If you plan to distribute and store .tar.gz files on your website, Kinsta’s managed hosting services can help make the most of your space.

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. The most often used algorithm for compressing tar files is Gzip. By convention, the name of a tar archive compressed with gzip becomes .tar.gz or  .tgz.

As you might imagine, using a different compression utility on a .tar file will result in a different double extension. Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others. If that’s not entirely clear, don’t worry. As a result, one isn’t necessarily better than the other — it’s all a matter of application. So, a tar.gz file is a tarball compressed using gzip.

In this guide, you will learn how to extract or unzip .tar.gz files in Linux. Note the lack of hyphen for the command flags. This https://www.cryptonews.wiki/ is because most versions of tar allow both gnu and bsd style options (simplistically, gnu requires a hyphen, bsd doesn’t).

How to Unzip .tar.gz in Linux via Terminal

Many are also available for Linux and macOS. Note that this command will throw an error unless you specify the exact filename listed in the .tar file. As we’ll cover more in the next section, you can verify file names by listing contents with the tar -tf filename.tar.gz command. 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.

This command will extract (-x) the file (-f) specified (in this case, filename.tar.gz) to the current directory. Note that this command also works with other common compression formats such as .tar.bz2. Though gzip is the most common compression utility, it’s not the only one.

This error usually occurs when a .tar has been saved as a .gz despite having never been compressed using the gzip utility. From videos to entire software packages, many files are compressed and stored using the .tar.gz format. While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward. Mac’s native archive utility supports the file format as well, which means you can just double-click on the tar.gz file in question to extract it.

How to Extract a tar.gz File to a Different Directory

Therefore, knowing how to open or untar tar.gz files is very useful. The command extracts files to a new directory called example1, which is located in the current directory. Any remotely modern version of tar should auto-detect that the archive is gzipped, and add „z“ for you. You can also use –wildcards to extract all files with a certain extension or name. Otherwise, keep reading to learn how to unzip .tar.gz files in Linux, macOS, and Windows.

1. You can just as easily unzip the resulting .tar.gz file with the decompress (-d) option.
2. However, there are also many third-party tools you can install for a more user-friendly experience.
3. While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip.

Thankfully, unless you’re somehow missing your tar or gzip utility, most common errors are very easy to fix. Where most operating systems make it easy to extract and create .zip files, the same can’t really be said for .tar files — at least not in ways that are easy to notice. Instead of downloading a specific application to your computer or leveraging its built-in abilities, you can extract your tar.gz archive using an online app.

Extract Files with gzip

Ubuntu versions are usually named using an alliterative adjective and an animal name, both starting with the same letter. While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip. While slightly different, they are quite lightweight and offer a much simpler alternative to using the command https://www.crypto-trading.info/ line. To access the Windows command line, search for “command prompt” or “cmd” in the search bar. Right-click the first result and select the “Run as administrator” option. An advantage of this method is that it can be used on any operating system, whether Windows or Mac, without worrying about native support.

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. Some third-party tools also offer extended flexibility for converting between file types‌, saving more time if you want to change between compression formats.

You can just as easily unzip the resulting .tar.gz file with the decompress (-d) option. Thankfully, you don’t need to be a 1960s computer technician to use and extract .tar files – nor do modern .tar files even have anything to do with old computers. You have multiple ways to open tar.gz files in Mac. The terminal command used in Linux works here just fine if you are comfortable with terminal commands.