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Using the tar command on Linux to uncompress tar.gz files with the command line.

The tar command on Linux is very useful for uncompressing files on your Linux machine. The most used command on a Linux system is uncompressing files that you have downloaded from an Internet source.

The tar -xvf command will uncompress a tar.gz file.

~$ tar -xvf myfile.tar.gz

To uncompress a tar.bz2 file use this command.

~$ tar -jxvf myfile.tar.bz2

Here is an example.

mint@mint ~/Downloads $ tar -jxvf libdvdcss-1.2.13.tar.bz2 
libdvdcss-1.2.13/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/dvdcss/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/dvdcss/dvdcss.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/libdvdcss.pc.in
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/device.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/error.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/ioctl.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/device.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/css.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/common.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/csstables.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/ioctl.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/libdvdcss.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/libdvdcss.h
libdvdcss-1.2.13/src/css.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/README
libdvdcss-1.2.13/aclocal.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/configure
libdvdcss-1.2.13/config.h.in
libdvdcss-1.2.13/depcomp
libdvdcss-1.2.13/test/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/test/dvd_region.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/test/csstest.c
libdvdcss-1.2.13/config.sub
libdvdcss-1.2.13/config.guess
libdvdcss-1.2.13/AUTHORS
libdvdcss-1.2.13/libdvdcss.spec
libdvdcss-1.2.13/NEWS
libdvdcss-1.2.13/Makefile.am
libdvdcss-1.2.13/doc/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/doc/doxygen.cfg.in
libdvdcss-1.2.13/doc/footer.html
libdvdcss-1.2.13/doc/header.html
libdvdcss-1.2.13/COPYING
libdvdcss-1.2.13/INSTALL
libdvdcss-1.2.13/configure.ac
libdvdcss-1.2.13/ChangeLog
libdvdcss-1.2.13/missing
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/ltsugar.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/lt~obsolete.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/libtool.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/attributes.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/ltversion.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/m4/ltoptions.m4
libdvdcss-1.2.13/install-sh
libdvdcss-1.2.13/ltmain.sh
libdvdcss-1.2.13/Makefile.in
libdvdcss-1.2.13/msvc/
libdvdcss-1.2.13/msvc/libdvdcss.dsp
libdvdcss-1.2.13/msvc/workspace.dsw
libdvdcss-1.2.13/msvc/csstest.dsp
libdvdcss-1.2.13/msvc/config.h

To create a tar.gz archive of a directory and its contents, use this command: tar -zcvf archive.tar.gz dir/

mint@mint ~/Downloads $ tar -zcvf mine.tar.gz mine/
mine/
mine/mylist.txt
mine/my.txt

To uncompress to a specific directory, use the uncompress command with the -C parameter. Here I am uncompressing the archive to /tmp.

mint@mint ~/Downloads $ tar -xvf mine.tar.gz -C /tmp/
mine/
mine/mylist.txt
mine/my.txt

To list the contents of a tar.gz file; use this command.

mint@mint ~/Downloads $ tar -tvf mine.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x mint/mint         0 2014-02-18 01:24 mine/
-rw-r--r-- mint/mint      8552 2014-02-18 01:24 mine/mylist.txt
-rw-r--r-- mint/mint         0 2014-02-18 01:24 mine/my.txt

For a tar.bz2 file; you would use this command.

mint@mint ~/Downloads $ tar -jtvf mine.tar.bz2
drwxr-xr-x mint/mint         0 2014-02-18 01:24 mine/
-rw-r--r-- mint/mint      8552 2014-02-18 01:24 mine/mylist.txt
-rw-r--r-- mint/mint         0 2014-02-18 01:24 mine/my.txt

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