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)