How to convert a .bz2 file to a human-readable form in Windows 7 Professional

Deedee393 · 05-08-2012, 09:09 AM

Nothing to do with tar please, as I don't know how to convert my .bz2 file to a .tar.bz2 file.
I tried WINRAR, Peazip, 7zip, WinSCP etc. but when I try to open the file, it opens up as symbols, numbers and random letters. Any help would be appreciated.

TobiSGD · 05-08-2012, 09:11 AM

Code:

bunzip2 FILENAME.bz2

will extract the file.

acid_kewpie · 05-08-2012, 09:15 AM

it opens as symbols?? What does that mean? In Notepad?? quite possible the file is just wrongly named, and windows is just stupid when it comes to recognizing what a file actually IS.

tar is used to colelct multple files into a single archive

bzip2 / gzip is used to compress a file, hence you bzip2 a single tar file.

So maybe you're just loading the tar file as if it were a file to open? 7zup certainly can handle the file if it is what it says it is.

chrism01 · 05-08-2012, 07:28 PM

You can double check on the Linux box by using the 'file' cmd eg

Code:

file myfile.bz2

That should be able to tell you what you've really got there.
http://linux.die.net/man/1/file

John VV · 05-08-2012, 10:48 PM

the windows version of 7-zip will open a bz2
some of the folder structure might get lost

file.bz2 might turn into
file.tar
then 7-zip can open that

/file.tar/file

grail · 05-09-2012, 02:14 AM

My experience is the same as John's in that 7-zip works just fine. Once open in the 7-zip manager if presented with a single tar file simply double click again and it will take you into the
file and show the contents.

Deedee393 · 05-11-2012, 07:57 AM

Hi,
I used the bunzip2 command to extract the file, then re-downloaded WinSCP, and that seemed to do the trick. Thank you for your help!