Type at the command prompt tar xzf file.tar.gz - to uncompress a gzip tar file (.tgz or .tar.gz) tar xjf file.tar.bz2 - to uncompress a bzip2 tar file (.tbz or .tar.bz2) to extract the contents. tar xf file.tar - to uncompressed tar file (.tar) tar xC /var/tmp -f file.tar - to uncompress tar file (.tar) to another directory x = eXtract, this indicated an extraction c = create to create ) v = verbose (optional) the files with relative locations will be displayed. z = gzip-ped; j = bzip2-zipped f = from/to file ... (what is next after the f is the archive file) C = directory. In c and r mode, this changes the directory before adding the following files. In x mode, changes directoriy after opening the archive but before extracting entries from the archive. The files will be extracted in the current folder