In this article, we will discuss the solution for the error gzip: stdin: not in gzip format and what is the reason behind this error.

What Could Be the Reason for the error?

This error generally occurs when the user has created a simple tar file using the options(-cvpf), where

• c: create a new archive
• v: verbose
• p: extract information about file permissions (default superuser)
• f: use archive file

but at the time of extraction, a user tries to extract the file as a gzip file type using the options (-xzpf), where

• x: extract the file from the archive
• z: zgip file type
• p: extract information about file permissions (default superuser)
• f: use archive file

Difference between Tar, Zip, and Gz

Solution for the gzip: stdin: not in gzip format error

1. To solve the error, first, we need to check the file type.

file demo.tar.gz

 

2. As it is clearly shown this is not a gzip archive file but it is a POSIX archive file.

3. So, we got the almost solution to the problem. hence we need to extract the POSIX archive file using (-xvpf) options.

tar -xvpf demo.tar.gz

 

Conclusion

On the above article, it describes about an error when users uses different tar command options for creation and extraction. So, for solving this query first we need to look after the file type of the archive file. The ‘file’ command in Linux comes in handy and then we can use multiple of tar command options to solve this problem.