516

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?

Jonno
  • 21,049
  • 4
  • 61
  • 70
Jury A
  • 5,305
  • 2
  • 14
  • 5

6 Answers6

687

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
Lewis Diamond
  • 7,003
  • 1
  • 11
  • 9
  • 15
    You can also use bunzip2, which defaults to using the -d (uncompress) option. – RonaldB Jan 19 '17 at 16:18
  • 3
    @LewisDiamond I ran `bzip2 -d vim-8.0.tar.bz2`, that results `vim-8.0.tar`. I couldn't enter this. – alhelal Nov 17 '17 at 00:35
  • 7
    @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 used `tar -xjvf vim-8.0.tar.bz2`. – Lewis Diamond Nov 17 '17 at 15:52
  • 1
    A slight correction to Lewis's comment, tar also needs -f (at least on Raspbian Wheezy) as follows `tar -xf vim-8.0.tar` – JulianHarty Dec 17 '17 at 14:29
75

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.

zx8754
  • 693
  • 7
  • 17
Benj
  • 983
  • 7
  • 12
  • 6
    Excellent advice about the xjvf, just saved me. Thanks! – c-o-d Aug 17 '13 at 03:22
  • 5
    You 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 Jan 15 '15 at 15:14
  • 1
    `tar xf` should be sufficient with the BSD variant — the `j` flag is only used when compressing – Mark Fox Oct 30 '15 at 00:16
24

Use the bunzip2 (or bzip2 -d) command to decompress the file. For more information see this man page,

Levon
  • 940
  • 7
  • 16
20

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 file with a progress bar:

pv adb_int.tar | lbzip2 > adb_int.tar.bz2

Requirements for the progress bar:

sudo apt-get install -y pv

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:

pbzip2:

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:

enter image description here

For further information regarding the parameters for lbzip2: http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=lbzip2+-d+-n+32+my_file.bz2 :

enter image description here

Franck Dernoncourt
  • 20,384
  • 48
  • 186
  • 322
5
bzip2 -dc my_file.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -

worked for me on cygwin

Vishal
  • 59
  • 1
  • 2
  • 1
    It would be helpful if you could add a few sentences to your answer to explain what it does. – fixer1234 May 21 '15 at 17:25
  • 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 Jan 07 '16 at 19:39
  • 1
    I 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 Jan 07 '16 at 19:45
  • 3
    This doesn't help, since the original poster already mentioned that it's not a `tar` archive. – icedwater Jan 15 '16 at 02:29
-6
  1. Go to https://cloudconvert.com.
  2. Upload the file.
  3. Convert it into a .tar file.
  4. Download it.
  5. Extract it from there, in your terminal.
Mr. de Santos
  • 19
  • 5