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Opening a tar.gz file on Windows

Running tar for Windows, using this command:

c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\tar.exe -xzvf filename.tar.gz

gives the following error

c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\tar.exe: Cannot fork: Function not implemented
c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\tar.exe: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

On windows it doesn’t seem to call gzip automatically.

Therefore:
You need to install GZIP for Windows

And then run a command similar to what follows:

"c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\gzip.exe" -d -c "filename.tar.gz" | "c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\tar.exe" -x
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Posted in IT Tips.


2 Responses

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  1. Brad Rushworth says

    Another choice James is 7-Zip. It’s open-source also but has an easy to use interface.

    http://www.7-zip.org/

    • james says

      Doh,
      I forget that Windows has utilities. I tend to look around for the ported linux stuff because I’m familiar with it.



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