Linux/Unix: How To Extract and Decompress a .bz2/.tbz2 File

How to decompress a .bz2 file

The syntax is:

bzip2 -d your-filename-here.bz2
OR
bzip2 -d -v your-filename-here.bz2
OR
bzip2 -d -k your-filename-here.bz2
OR
bunzip2 filename.bz2

Examples

To extract a file called dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso.bz2, enter:
bzip2 -d dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso.bz2
To verify new file, enter:
ls -l dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_RE*
Sample outputs:

-rw-r--r--  1 vivek  wheel  634376192 Jul  1 15:57 dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso

You can now use extracted file but this option will not preserve original archive file. To Keep (don’t delete) input files during decompression, use:
bzip2 -d -k dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso.bz2
To see verbose output pass the -v option to the bzip2 command. The verbose mode show the compression ratio for each file processed. Further -v’s increase the verbosity level, spewing out lots of information which is primarily of interest for diagnostic purposes:
bzip2 -d -k -v dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso.bz2
OR
bzip2 -d -k -vv dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso.bz2
Sample outputs:

 dfly-x86_64-4.2.0_REL.iso.bz2: 
    [1: huff+mtf rt+rld]
    [2: huff+mtf rt+rld]
....
...
....
    [631: huff+mtf rt+rld]
    [632: huff+mtf rt+rld]
    done

Sample demo

Gif.01 Extract and Decompress a .bz2/.tbz2 File

Decompress a .tbz2 or .tbz or .tar.bz2 file

Use any one of the following syntax:

bzip2 -dc filename.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
bzip2 -dc filename.tbz2 | tar xvf -
bzip2 -dc filename.tbz | tar xvf -

OR use gnu/tar command syntax:

tar -jxvf filename.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf filename.tbz2
tar -jxvf filename.tbz

Where,

• bzip2 command options:
• -d : Force decompression.
• -c : Decompress to standard output so-that tar command can take input.
• tar command options:
• -j : Call bzip2 to decompress file.
• -x : Extract file.
• -v : Verbose mode
• -f : Archive name.