List the contents of a compressed file (tar/ tar.gz)

[Eby Sebastian]

Sometime you may need to view the contents of files included in the tar file. In such cases, you can run the below commands according to your file format.

List the contents of a tar file

Code: [Select]

[root~]#tar -tvf filename.tar


List the contents of a tar.gz file

Code: [Select]

[root~]#tar -ztvf filename.tar.gz


List the contents of a tar.bz2 file

Code: [Select]

[root~]#tar -jtvf filename.tar.bz2

If the compressed file contains large number of files, then it is better to redirect the command output to a text file. So that you can search for any specific file or check it later.

Code: [Select]

[root~]#tar -tvf filename.tar > finename.txt