1. Windows Create Tar Gz

A file using .tar.gz format is a file that has been created using the Unix-based archival application tar and then compressed using gzip compression. These files are often referred as “tarballs,” and while you can find them with a double extension (.tar.gz), the extension can also be shortened to .tgz or .gz.

Usually, tar files are commonly used by Ubuntu and macOS users for data archival and backups, but sometimes Windows 10 users may also come across these types of files and may need to extract its contents.

Mar 31, 2019  This article was written by Darlene Antonelli, MA.Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field.

• Apr 10, 2016  The tar command on Linux is often used to create.tar.gz or.tgz archive files, also called “tarballs.” This command has a large number of options, but you just need to remember a few letters to quickly create archives with tar. The tar command can extract the resulting archives, too.
• That's why you rarely see just a.tar file and more commonly encounter.tar.gz or.tgz files. Installing tar. On Linux, BSD, Illumos, and even Mac OS, the tar command is already installed for you. On Windows, the easiest way to handle.tar files is to install the LGPL open source 7-Zip utility.

While you can use a number of third-party applications like 7-Zip and PeaZip, sometimes these applications don’t play well with files created on another platform, and they’re slow to uncompressed a large number of files. However, Windows 10 includes native support for tar that you can use with Command Prompt to extract these files. Also, you can even use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that brings native support for Ubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE, and therefore you can also access many Linux tools, including tar to quickly extract content from tarballs.

In this guide, you’ll learn the steps to use native tar commands on Windows 10 using Command Prompt and Ubuntu to extract the content of a .tar.gz file.

How to extract .tar.gz, .tgz, or .gz tarballs using tar on Windows 10

To extract .tar.gz, .tgz, .gz as well as .zip files using tar on Windows 10, use these steps:

1. Open Start.

2. Search for Command Prompt, right-click the first result and select the Run as administrator option.

3. Type the following command to use tar to extract the files and press Enter:

   Quick tip: In the command, make sure to update the syntax to include the source and destination paths. Also, because you’re using tar on Windows 10, you don’t need to specify the path as if you were running Linux. You can simply use the path format used by Windows.

Once you complete the steps, after a few moments, you will have all the files and folder extracted to the destination path you specified.

It’s assumed that you’re extracting a tarball that was created on another system, therefore we’re skipping some arguments usually necessary to preserve permissions, which on Windows 10 are not necessary to access the files.

How to extract .tar.gz, .tgz, or .gz tarballs using tar on Linux on Windows 10

To use tar on Linux, you need to install a distro (such as Ubuntu) by enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) using the Windows Features experience, and then install Ubuntu from the Microsoft Store.

To extract a .tar.gz file using Linux on Windows 10, use these steps:

1. Open Start.

2. Search for Ubuntu and click the top result to open the app.

3. Type the following command to extract the content of .tar.gz file and press Enter:

   Quick tip: In the command, make sure to update the syntax to include the source and destination paths. If it’s only a .tar file, you can use the same command described above, but do not include the z argument.

In the above command, we type sudo to run the application as an administrator, tar to call the application, and then we fed it some arguments, including:

• x — instructs tar that you want to extract content.
• v — verbose. This is an optional argument to display the extraction process. Otherwise, you’ll only see blinking cursor until the process is complete.
• z — tells tar to uncompressed the content of a .tar.gz file with gzip.
• f — instructs tar the name of the file you’re about to extract.

Then you need to specified the path of the tarball file you want to extract. You’ll notice that the path starts /mnt/c/, instead of c:, and this is because we’re actually working in the Linux world.

-C — (hyphen and capital C) is used to tell tar to change folders. When you’re executing a command, you start in the source folder, and then you need to specify the destination folder, which is the path we specified to complete the command. You can extract the files to any folder you want, but remember to start the path with /mnt/ followed by the Windows path. Ios apps running on mac os x.

It’s very important that you pay attention to uppercase and lowercase while typing a command in Linux as Desktop is not the same as desktop.

Windows Create Tar Gz

In this guide, we’re looking at the basic steps to perform a specific task, if you’re not a Linux user, there is a lot more to learn about tar. If you want to learn more about this tool, in the Ubuntu console type tar --help.