file compression Archives • Linux Tips

Unzip .gz Files With gunzip

You can just as easily do this in a GUI, but we’ll be using the Linux terminal to unzip .gz files with gunzip. Why? Because we can! You never know when you’ll be limited to a terminal and need to extract the files found in a .gz file.

If you do some searching around the web, you’ll see that .gz files are made with gzip. If you do some more digging, you’ll learn that gzip is both a file type and the name of the application. The .gz files are referred to as gzip files.

While you may encounter just plain .gz files, you’ll often find them as ‘tar.gz’ files, meaning they’ve been prepared for tape archives. You can read about that here:

Let’s Decompress A File (tar.gz) In The Terminal

You won’t need to install anything for this article. The tools will be installed on any major distro – and even on most minor distros. Gzip has been around for more than 30 years, at the time of this writing, and is widely used – even though there are many other compression tools out there. The .gz format is not patent encumbered, nor is it proprietary.

We’ll be using gunzip to unzip .gz files. If you check the man page, you’ll see:

gzip, gunzip, zcat – compress or expand files

As you can see, that means it is the right tool for the job. You can just as easily use ‘file-roller’ in your GUI to unzip .gz files. You have choices!

It’s currently a Sunday evening and my last few articles have been quite long. I think we’ll keep this one short. I might as well…

Unzip .gz Files With gunzip:

As I mentioned earlier, you can do this with a GUI application. We’ll be unzipping .gz files in the terminal. Just press CTRL + ALT + T to get your terminal open and we can begin.

The first thing you need is a .gz file.

Download example.gz here: Link

With that freshly downloaded, you can use cd to get to your ~/Downloads directory (or whichever directory you used):

cd ~/Downloads

1	cd ~/Downloads

Now, you can simply extract the contents, like so:

gunzip example.gz

1	gunzip example.gz

If you want to extract multiple .gz files at one time, try this:

gunzip example.gz example1.gz, example2.gz

1	gunzip example.gz example1.gz, example2.gz

If you want to extract all the .gz files in a folder, try this command:

gunzip *.gz

1	gunzip *.gz

There you have it. That’s all you need to know if you want to unzip .gz files with gunzip. It’s not even a little complicated. Anyone can figure this one out.

Closure:

I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d keep this one short. There’s no reason to make it all that long and it’s a weekend. It’s also a holiday weekend and you got a lovely article on Saturday. This one is just a simple task, for those who might want to unzip ..gz files with gunzip – in the Linux terminal. It’s pretty easy!

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How To: Compress And Decompress .bz2 Files

In today’s article, we’re going to discuss how to compress and decompress .bz2 files. This is something you may eventually need to know, so I’ll cover it here. I’ll just cover the basics, as most folks won’t need to know anything more than the basics. This should actually be a fairly short and direct article. There’s not a whole lot to it.

If you don’t already know, .bz2 files are bzip2 files. You’ll find that bzip2 is an opensource compression program that gets some regular usage, and you’ll sometimes find downloaded files that are compressed with this format. You may also, for compatibility reasons, want to compress files with bzip2 to share with other users who are already set on using the .bz2 format.

For the curious, the bzip2 man pages define this particular application as (and, as always, I highly encourage folks to read the man pages themselves – this one being a bit more complicated than others):

bzip2, bunzip2 – a block-sorting file compressor

Again, we’re going to just cover how to compress and decompress .bz2 files in this article. That’s all we’re going to do. You don’t tend to come across too many files compressed with bzip2, but they do show up from time to time.

Because of that, we’re going to cover how to compress and decompress those files in this article. It’s gotta get covered eventually, so it might as well be now. Read on!

Compress And Decompress .bz2 Files:

This article requires an open terminal, like many other articles on this site. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

You might actually not have bzip2 installed. It’s not always installed by default. Fortunately, as far as I can tell, it shares the same name in every major distro, that is ‘bzip2‘. So, just go ahead and install it like you’d install any other software. For example, if you’re using Fedora, your command would look similar to:

sudo dnf install bzip2

1	sudo dnf install bzip2

See? I didn’t use Ubuntu as the default example! We’re mixing everything up today! (Use apt if you’re using a distro with apt, like Debian or Ubuntu and derivatives.)

At this point, you should probably have a .bz2 file to work on for the sake of the article. Seeing as I have no idea what you’ve already downloaded, we should probably start with you making one – just so you can see how to decompress it.

To compress a file with bzip2, the command looks like (See the detailed warning below this command, do not use this command without reading the warning!):

bzip2 -z <file_name>

1	bzip2 -z <file_name>

That will create a file with the same filename but make a .bz2 file. However, this is a destructive act. If you use the above command, the original file will be deleted! If you wish to keep the original file, you need the -k (keep) flag. That looks like:

bzip2 -zk <file_name>

1	bzip2 -zk <file_name>

That command will not remove the original file, as would be the default. Obviously, the -z flag means ‘zip’.

If you want to decompress a file with bzip2, the command looks like:

bzip2 -d <file_name>.bz2

1	bzip2 -d <file_name>.bz2

This will extract the file(s) into the current directory. Of course, the -d means ‘decompress’. This is not a destructive operation. The original and extracted files will remain on your file system.

As you can see, it’s not all that difficult to compress and decompress .bz2 files. You might go years not seeing any files in that format, but you’re eventually going to bump into one and now you know how to deal with it in the terminal – and how to respond in kind.

Closure:

And there you have it. You have yet another article. We’re getting close to 300 articles at this point, so it has been a long journey. If you feel like writing an article, let me know! Anyhow, you can now compress and decompress .bz2 files easily enough, and that was the point of the article.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

How To: Extract An .rar File

Today, we’re going to learn how to extract an .rar file in Linux. You don’t see .rar files all that often with Linux, but sometimes they crop up. Today’s article will explain how to extract them.

You may recall .rar files from your Windows days, assuming you have a history with Windows – as many of us Linux users do. You’d probably be most familiar with the application known as ‘WinRAR‘.

While the application is specifically for Windows (there’s a text-based WinRAR for Linux, perhaps a subject for another article), it produces files compressed with the .rar format. The .rar compression is much like any other compression, from .tar.gz to .zip. At some point, you may be faced with opening one while you’re using Linux.

Just because the files are often made with WinRAR doesn’t mean the files will only be opened in Windows. Once in a while, you’ll find something you need that’s in .rar format and you’re using Linux. Well, fear not, you can extract an .rar file easily enough. It’s just a simple terminal command away and you should be all set. While not a skill you’ll need often, it’s one you’ll maybe need and now is a good enough time to learn how.

Extract An .RAR File:

Once you have the terminal open, you’ll need to install an application called ‘unrar’. If you’re using a major distro, it’s likely in your repository – though maybe under the name of ‘unrar-nonfree’. Search your repositories and you’ll find it.

If you’re using Debian/Ubuntu/similar then it’s easy enough – it’s called ‘unrar’ and you install it with:

sudo apt install unrar

1	sudo apt install unrar

With that installed, the next part is really quite easy:

unrar x /path/to/file.rar

1	unrar x /path/to/file.rar

That will extract the contents of the .rar file while preserving paths. If you don’t care about that sort of result, just use the ‘e’ flag like this (and it’ll extract everything to the current directory):

unrar e /path/to/file.rar

1	unrar e /path/to/file.rar

You can also extract password protected content easily enough, just read the man pages with man unrar to learn how. Anything you can do with a GUI you can do with the terminal. You just need to read the man page. This article only covers how to extract an .rar file without any complexity.

Closure:

That’s it. That’s today’s article. The goal was to learn how to extract an .rar file in Linux and now you know how to do so with unrar and the Linux terminal. ‘Snot all that complicated, really.

Unzip A .zip File In the Linux Terminal

Today’s article is going to tell you how to unzip a .zip file in the Linux terminal. It shouldn’t be too complex, nor will it take a great deal of time to learn how to unzip a file.

In the Linux world, we don’t really see the .zip files all that often. We have other ways to compress files, but .zip is still there and you’ll sometimes come across them in your travels.

If you’re unaware, the .zip form of data-compression is actually a ratified standard. The format has been around since the late 80s and is one of the compression methods that supports loss-less compression. There are all sorts of compression formats and methods, but .zip has been around since forever and will probably exist long into the future.

If you want to unzip a .zip in a GUI, I’d say that you need look no further than PeaZip. It’s easy enough to compile from source, or you can find pre-built PeaZip packages for most distros. This article, on the other hand, is how to unzip a zip in the Linux terminal.

It’s not all that daunting and should be a pretty easy article for even a beginner to follow. Though, I suppose, any well-written article should be easy enough for a beginner to follow. Were I something other than a basic keyboard smasher, I’d probably be able to do that!

Read: Decompress a .tar.gz in the terminal

Unzip A .zip:

The headline clearly mentions doing this in the terminal, so you’re going to need an open terminal to continue. That’s relatively simple. Just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your now-open terminal, let’s first make sure you have the ability to unzip a .zip file. To do that, let’s use:

which unzip

1	which unzip

That should return something akin to:

which unzip
/usr/bin/unzip

1 2	which unzip /usr/bin/unzip

If you do not get a result, you’ll need to install unzip from your system’s repositories. Trust me, it’s in there – unless you’re using a really, really basic distro.

Assuming you get results indicating that you have unzip, it’s actually easy to unzip a .zip in the Linux terminal. You just navigate to the correct directory and run:

unzip <file_name>

1	unzip <file_name>

Which, I suppose, is mostly all you’re going to need. I should also mention that when you’re attempting to run this command, you can generally type the first few letters of the file name, and then press TAB to auto-complete the file name, saving you some typing time and just generally making the whole thing easier.

Obviously, there’s more to the unzip command. You can check the man unzip page, but the more useful flags will get covered here. Seriously, check the man page. The command is absurdly complex, with tons of options for obscure uses.

For example, to unzip a .zip to a different directory, you just use the -d flag, like so:

unzip <file_name> -d /desired/path

1	unzip <file_name> -d /desired/path

If you need to enter the password, you can just use:

unzip -P <password> <file_name>

1	unzip -P <password> <file_name>

When you want to list the files without decompressing them, you just use the -l flag, like this:

unzip -l <file_name>

1	unzip -l <file_name>

If you want to test the ,zip file to see if it’s corrupted, you can use the -t flag.

unzip -t <file_name>

1	unzip -t <file_name>

Normally, it’ll extract the files and overwrite the existing files (if any). You can avoid that with -n flag:

unzip -n <file_name>

1	unzip -n <file_name>

When you unzip a .zip, you will find out that it happily creates new directories. You can avoid that with the -j flag, like this:

unzip -j <file_name>

1	unzip -j <file_name>

Do read the man page! There’s a zillion options.

Closure:

Seriously, read the man page. Learn how to unzip a .zip file – and then all the many, many options included. Of all the man pages out there, this one is one of the most complex ’cause this one little application has a ton of options. Even if you don’t intend to learn it all, read the man page!