How do I open a tgz file?

[kavi]

I downloaded something and it came in a tgz file. I have absolutely no idea how to unpack or open or whatever this file and the only information I can find from google is that I have to download some $80 stuffit program.

So is there any other program out there that is free that I can use to open this? I have unarchiver and it doesn't seem to be working.

Thanks for any help.

 

[72930]

You need the free Stuffit Expander (just sign up here)...

This functionality really should come with OSX

 

[TheStu]

I thought OS X could open .tgz's... or have I always had stuffit installed?

 

[Blubbert]

Download the Unarchiver, its free, and better than Stuffit. Or you could use the gunzip command in the terminal and then the tar command, if youre proficient with the command line.

 

[72930]

Download the Unarchiver, its free, and better than Stuffit. Or you could use the gunzip command in the terminal and then the tar command, if youre proficient with the command line.

The Unarchiver is much more prone to failing, especially with password protected files.

 

[kavi]

Way for them to hide that free version of the program. I looked all over their site and could only find a 30 day trial that still wanted my credit card number.

Thanks for that.

 

[kavi]

And apparently stuffit doesn't work.

Could someone give me those terminal instructions? I've never used terminal before so you have to treat me like an idiot when explaining what to do, thanks.

 

[Nermal]

Something is screwed up if you can't just double-click the file. OS X (Leopard, at least) can open them directly without any additional software.

 

[martychang]

Bah, why wasn't this the FIRST reply to this thread? Mac OS X is based on UNIX, ever UNIX-like system comes with the "tar" command. tgz is short for tar.gz, a gzipped tarball, the main compression format on Unix systems other than Mac OS X.

Open the Terminal in /Applications/Utilities, "tar -xzf <file>" will do it. The x option says eXtract(as opposed to making a new tar), z says pass it to the "gzip" command first, f says to Force it(many stupid problems that don't mean anything practical are avoided with this).

If you ever encounter a tar.bz2 or tbz/tbz2 file, you would just replace z with j(they ran out of letters), which passes it to bzip2 instead of gzip.

 

[kavi]

so all I do is open terminal and type:

tar -xzf filename.tgz

I've tried that and I can't say it worked...

Kavi:~ Kavi$ tar -xzf h2.tgz
tar (child): h2.tgz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
Kavi:~ Kavi$

 

[martychang]

so all I do is open terminal and type:

tar -xzf filename.tgz

I've tried that and I can't say it worked...

Well, ok, you need to be in the directory that the file is in. Or you need to type the full filepath.

CD <relative directory OR absolute path changes you to that directory, and then all commands will executive relative to your location unless an absolute path is specified. But you can always specify an absolute path.

Example: if the file is in your home folder..

tar -xzf /Users/(username)/file.tgz

or
cd /Users/(username)
then
tar -xzf file.tgz

or

cd /Users
cd (username)
tar -xzf file.tgz

Hopefully you get the picture, there are an infinite number of ways to do this.

 

[kavi]

Last login: Fri Apr 4 13:13:15 on ttys000
Kavi:~ Kavi$ tar -xzf /Users/Kavi/Desktop/h2.tgz

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
Kavi:~ Kavi$

so I guess I'm doing this right and the file itself is screwed up somehow then?

 

[northy124]

Kavi It Would Already be Extracted If You Had Used Stuffit Expander

 

[kavi]

stuffit didn't work, it gave me some kind of error message.

 

[martychang]

stuffit didn't work, it gave me some kind of error message.

alright, this is different...

Try renaming it to (file).tar.gz instead of (file).tgz. That might be throwing it off. Otherwise the file may be screwed up, in which case I don't know.

 

[Big Dave]

Try this

tar -xvzf file.tgz

if that doesn't work, then do it one at a time.

unzip file.tgz
then
tar -xvf file.tar

 

[greenvomit8]

"The Unarchiver" from the app store worked well for me. Thanks

 

[arynchoong]

To extract :
tar xzf file.tgz