You can unpack a .tar.gz file into the current directory like this:
tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz
The options used are
- -x
- 
Extract 
- -z
- 
Unzip 
- -f
- 
Process a file input 
- -v
- 
Be verbose, i.e. print each extracted file 
Side notes:
- The dash is optional (tar xzvf ...works as well).
- For .tar.bz2archives, usejinstead ofz(tar xjvf...`)
- In order to create a *.tar.gz archive, use -cflag instead of-xflag.
- The order of parameters matters.
Posted by Henning Koch to makandra dev (2011-06-12 18:12)