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. If the directory does not exist, tar will create it automatically. Ubuntu Core is a minimalistic and immutable version explicitly designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded systems. The Ubuntu logo, often called the “Circle of Friends,” comprises three people holding hands. It signifies the strong sense of community and interconnectedness at the core of Ubuntu’s philosophy.
Using third-party tools
To do that, you can use the tar command with the -t option, which lists the contents of an archive without extracting it. You also need to use the -z option to tell tar that the archive is compressed with gzip, and the -f option to specify the file name. 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. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as gzip.
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. In this guide, you will learn how to extract or unzip .tar.gz files in Linux. DEB is the native and most common package format Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions use.
A file with just a .tar extension is uncompressed, but those will be very rare. A “.tar” file is a collection of files compressed into a single file or archive. Short for “Tape ARchive,” the name “TAR” is a throwback to when files were stored on magnetic tape drives. Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently. If you want to create your own tar.gz file, you can use the tar command with the -c option, which tells tar to create a new archive. You also need to use the -z option to compress the archive with gzip, and the -f option to specify the file name.
- You can review the contents of a tar file before you extract it by using the -t (list) option.
- However, there are some pretty major differences when it comes to accessing data within the files and the compression efficiency.
- As we see later, different compression utilities may require different methods for extracting and unzipping files.
- WinRAR is a popular file compression & archive utility software.
How to List Contents of .tar.gz File in Linux
Creating archives is an important step when you’re backing up your Linux file system. This ensures that your backup remains unaffected and the files don’t corrupt if anything breaks on your system. Similar to the previous error, this error occurs when an archive was saved as a .tar despite not being a .tar archive. 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 line.
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. To do this we’ll use almost exactly the same command as before but with one important difference. The .bz2 extension suffix tells us it has been compressed using the bzip2 command. Instead of using the-z (gzip) option, we will use the -j (bzip2) option to unzip the bz2 file. The tar command also provides support for extracting only specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file.
Untar tar, tar.gz, tar.bx2 Files
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. 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). Of course, that’s not to say .tar files are some kind of “lesser” format than .zip.
View a List of Files within an Archive
Forty years later we are still using the tar command to extract tar files on to our hard drives. 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. Most file managers, such as Nautilus, Dolphin, or Thunar, support extracting tar.gz files by right-clicking on the file and choosing the Extract option from the context menu.
That means users can download and use it for free during a trial period. Also, its trial version does not have time limitations, and users can still use it even after the trial period has expired, with occasional reminders to purchase the license. These files can be used in incremental backup strategies – where only new or modified files are added to the archive. Gzip compression reduces the overall file size, which makes it more efficient for distribution, backup, and storage purposes. It just bundles files & directories together while preserving their opportunity cost definition accountingtools file structure and metadata.
Is .tar.gz same as .zip?
Rather, they both accomplish the same task (file compression) in the same way. 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. People new to the .tar format usually equate it to a .zip archive, but a tar archive is not compressed. Tar collected all the files into one package, but the files can be compressed with separate utilities. The extraction method is precisely the same for tar files that have compression, such as.tar.gz,.tar.bz2, and others. To unzip the .tar.gz files, you’ll need to use specific commands and tools depending on your operating system.
Therefore, knowing how to open or untar tar.gz files is very useful. Most Linux distributions ship with a preinstalled archive manager. Decompressing TAR and TAR.GZ files is only a matter of few clicks using the GUI. File compression is a great way to save storage on a computer. If you’re familiar with packages in Linux, you may have come across a TAR or a TAR.GZ file.
However, there are some pretty major differences when it comes to accessing data within the files and the compression efficiency. To extract a tar.gz file using an archive manager, you need to open the file with the archive manager and then click on the Extract button. You can also select the files and directories you want to extract and the destination directory where you want to extract them. For TAR.GZ files, you will have to unzip the compressed archive to TAR, and then further extract the TAR file using 7-Zip. The collective -xvzf flag stands for Extract, Verbose, gzip, and Filename respectively.
