How do I: UNIX command line uncompress tar.gz

HELP!

I have a file called file.tar.gz. How can I uncompress this file on a redhat server from command line. I want all the files extracted the the current directory that I am in

There is more than one way to do this, however I tend to do it like this from command prompt:

gunzip file.tar.gz
tar -xvf file.tar

Alternatively you can use one single command to do all the work:

tar -zxvf file.tar.gz

The -z basically does the gunzip work for you. Hope that helps.

tar -zxvf = <3

tar is a compression technology used to create a Tape ARchive. The resulting file is known as a tarball.

If you have Window, this is the same as a Zip file. You use winzip to compress and uncompress .zip files.So its the same idea. To uncompress the files (or to get the files out of a tarball), you can use the following commands in linux.

[
tar xvf filename.tar


If the tarball has also been gzipped (compressed), you can use the following command:
tar xvfz filename.tar.gz



If you only want certain directories from the tarball, do this:
tar xvzf filename.tar.gz */dir.you.want/*



If you have a .tar.bz2 file, then you need bzip2 installed (/usr/ports/archivers/bzip2), and you issue this command:
tar yxf filename.tar.bz2

/cheer for 3 years later..?

And winblows zipped files are different from tarballs. A zipped file is compressed, whereas a tarball is just a bunch of files clumped together into one unit not at all compressed.