402
66
I have a file as: filename.bz2
I need to decompress.
I have tried the command: tar xvjf filename.tar.bz2
, but it didn't work as the file is not a tar
file.
How do I decompress this file?
402
66
I have a file as: filename.bz2
I need to decompress.
I have tried the command: tar xvjf filename.tar.bz2
, but it didn't work as the file is not a tar
file.
How do I decompress this file?
528
Try the following:
bzip2 -d filename.bz2
Note, that this command will not preserve original archive file.
To preserve the original archive, add the -k
option:
bzip2 -dk filename.bz2
67
To explain a bit further, a single file can be compressed with bzip2
thus:
bzip2 myfile.txt
tar
is only required when compressing multiple files:
tar cvjf myfile.tar.bz *.txt
Hence, when uncompressing a .bz2
file use bunzip
, when uncompressing a tar.bz2
file use tar xjvf
.
4You can just use tar xjf filename.tar.bz2
. The v
just adds verbose output. Keep your terminal clean! I also had problems running tar -xjf
, so be sure to try running it sans the -
– MrOodles – 2015-01-15T15:14:21.523
1tar xf
should be sufficient with the BSD variant — the j
flag is only used when compressing – Mark Fox – 2015-10-30T00:16:15.420
6Excellent advice about the xjvf, just saved me. Thanks! – Edgar Aroutiounian – 2013-08-17T03:22:03.240
20
Use the bunzip2
(or bzip2 -d
) command to decompress the file. For more information see this man page,
Link is broken Levon – ankii – 2019-05-19T06:31:30.160
14
bzip2
is mono-threaded, which means it will take a long time to decompress a large file.
To decompress a .bz2
file multithreadedly, you can use the free, open source program lbzip2
:
sudo apt-get install lbzip2
lbzip2 -d my_file.bz2
-d
indicates you wish to decompress the file. It would automatically determine how many threads it will use. To specify the exact number of threads you want to use, use the -n
parameter, e.g.:
lbzip2 -d -n 32 my_file.bz2
A few more useful commands with lbzip2
:
To compress a folder:
tar -c -I lbzip2 -f file.tar.bz2 folder_name
To uncompress a folder:
tar -I lbzip2 -xvf file.tar.bz2
Parameters:
-I, --use-compress-program PROG
filter through PROG (must accept -d)
-x, --extract, --get
extract files from an archive
-v, --verbose
verbosely list files processed
-f, --file ARCHIVE
use archive file or device ARCHIVE
Some alternatives to decompress a .bz2
file multithreadedly:
sudo apt-get install pbzip2
pbzip2 -d my_file.bz2
mpibzip2
: designed to be used on on cluster machines.
If you need some large .bz2
files to experiment with: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/mirrors.html
For example (a 14 GB .bz2
file, 200 GB uncompressed):
wget http://dumps.wikimedia.your.org/wikidatawiki/20170120/wikidatawiki-20170120-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2
lbzip2 -d -n 32 wikidatawiki-20170120-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2
http://vbtechsupport.com/1614/ did the benchmark:
For further information regarding the parameters for lbzip2
: http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=lbzip2+-d+-n+32+my_file.bz2 :
3
bzip2 -dc my_file.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
worked for me on cygwin
1It would be helpful if you could add a few sentences to your answer to explain what it does. – fixer1234 – 2015-05-21T17:25:03.723
2@fixer1234 '-c' option copies the decompressed output to STDOUT which is then piped to tar utility and presented as filename using '-' so you can simplify it as:
bzip2 -d my_file.tar.bz2 ; tar xvf my_file.tar
– sactiw – 2016-01-07T19:39:36.483
1I believe even this should work bzip2 -dc my_file.tar.bz2 | tar xv
i.e. no need to use -f option and corresponding '-' sign after it because tar can directly read the from STDOUT through the pipe operator. Also, feel free to drop -v option if you don't want to list files being processed. – sactiw – 2016-01-07T19:45:02.250
2This doesn't help, since the original poster already mentioned that it's not a tar
archive. – icedwater – 2016-01-15T02:29:24.433
-5
7Isn't suitable for really large files! – narendranathjoshi – 2016-02-03T09:04:10.023
11We're superusers. We want a terminal-based solution. – noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ – 2016-06-07T16:41:40.513
1@Mr. de Santos ... and thereby giving up control over your data. You can not be serious. – dirdi – 2019-09-16T18:22:16.450
6You can also use bunzip2, which defaults to using the -d (uncompress) option. – RonaldB – 2017-01-19T16:18:45.770
2@LewisDiamond I ran
bzip2 -d vim-8.0.tar.bz2
, that resultsvim-8.0.tar
. I couldn't enter this. – alhelal – 2017-11-17T00:35:04.0475@alhelal that's because it's a .tar.bz2 file. You unzipped the tarball, you're left with the unzipped tarbal. Extract it with
tar -x vim-8.0.tar
. Originally you could have usedtar -xjvf vim-8.0.tar.bz2
. – Lewis Diamond – 2017-11-17T15:52:36.3431A slight correction to Lewis's comment, tar also needs -f (at least on Raspbian Wheezy) as follows
tar -xf vim-8.0.tar
– JulianHarty – 2017-12-17T14:29:48.140