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Is there a way to extract files of tar.7z format using command line tools in Ubuntu?

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  • yes it does @guntbert See the accepted answer "7z x PACKAGE.7z that should eXtract the packages with full path." How is that not command line?
    – Rinzwind
    Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 14:31
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    Sorry, but the question is not a duplicate. It asks for handling tar.7z files. Neither the previous question nor its answers cover this matter. Since the answers don't address this question fully, it was legitimate to pose the question here.
    – tohuwawohu
    Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 22:36
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    Yes I also agree, the point of the question is the extraction of the files with a tar.7z format.
    – pacodelumberg
    Commented Sep 6, 2013 at 17:12
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    @Rinzwind: Please give some time before marking any post as duplicate. Since you marked it first, all copied your action. This question is for extracting .tar.7z not .7z !! I guess you know the difference.. :)
    – Saurav Kumar
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 4:57
  • @SauravKumar they are exactly the same.Linux does not care about suffixes and an extraction is based on the 1st bytes of the file. It is an identical question. And I trust stephen, andrea, guntbert enough to PM me in chat when I mess up (I have lots of examples of that :D )
    – Rinzwind
    Commented Nov 30, 2013 at 7:24

3 Answers 3

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Yes - the package p7zip / p7zip-full provides a command-line application to zip/unzip 7z files. The command is simply 7z.

You can combine a 7z / tar call using a pipe:

7z x -so yourfile.tar.7z | tar xf - -C target_dir

where target_dir is a already-existing directory.

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  • 15
    Who ever publishes tar.7z (lzma compression) files should learn about tar.xz/txz (lzma2), since this compression if available for tar via J parameter (like tar -cJf; not to be confused: capital J is for xz, small j is for bzip2) when xz-tools package is installed. It's also the default format on kernel.org.
    – LiveWireBT
    Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 11:56
  • People may wish to use 7zip for the strong encryption and multi-volume support.
    – Aaron
    Commented Jan 26, 2015 at 20:47
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    I found the answer to my question of why people combine tarballs with 7z. Even though 7z can store trees of files, it apparently does not preserve Unix permissions and metadata, so tarball can be used to preserve that while using 7z. But then, I agree with @LiveWireBT, just use xz, gzip, or bzip2.
    – bambams
    Commented Mar 30, 2017 at 0:01
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    7z appears to be better for lots of smaller files.
    – Pavin Joseph
    Commented Oct 6, 2017 at 15:59
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    @Antonio: The question (an thus, my answer) concerned tar.7z files, not simple .7z archives. If your file isn't a compressed tar archive, of course my cmd line example will fail, since the tar command doesn't find a tar archive to expand.
    – tohuwawohu
    Commented Feb 4, 2018 at 8:01
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  • Install p7zip-full if not already installed:

    sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

  • execute this command to extract .tar.7z file(go to directory where is your file, if myfile.tar.7z is your file name):

    7za x myfile.tar.7z
tar -xvf myfile.tar

  • That's it. Actually first command extracts in .tar file then next command extracts it completely.

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Make sure that 7zip is installed, if not, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo apt-get install p7zip

To install the command line utility do:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

Once done you can do the following to extract:

7z e <file_name>.tar.7z

To extract with full paths:

7z x <file_name>.tar.7z

To specify a path to extract to:

7z x <file_name>.tar.7z -opath

7z does not allow spaces between -o and path.

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    7z x ghost.7z -o/home/node/ to extract to /home/node/ghost
    – nwgat
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 1:17
  • To open a password protected file you can provide -p<your password> as argument.
    – Soumendra
    Commented Apr 1, 2018 at 20:56
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    @Mitch, "To specify a path to extract to:", the path has to be continued with "-o" like "-o/mypath"
    – Dinesh Kumar P
    Commented Apr 23, 2018 at 14:23
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    Thanks @DineshKumarP, I was not getting put the destination path until sees his explanation saying that "-o" must be along the way "-o/path".
    – Richard Willian
    Commented Aug 25, 2018 at 14:12

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