OK I think this may be simple
I wanted to install skype on my machine. I downloaded the tar.bz2 version from the skype website and followed the install instructions - I navigated to the folder where I downloaded the software and type the command tar xjvf skype_ver-0_92_0_2.tar.bz2 , as instructed, I get the response
tar: bzip2: Cannot exec: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
I guess I'm missing something simple here.
Thanks in advance

do you have bzip2 installed?
maybe you can try to run bunzip2 on the file directly.

just right click with your mouse on the file and select extract here.

No, I don't think I had bzip2 installed. I downloaded a package for version 1.0.2, which I unpackaged succesfully, however I can't get it to unpackage the skype package. the command line says that bunzip2: command not found. So I'm guessing i didn't install properly. However, I don't understand how to do this, I can't find any install instructions.
Sorry this is all probably pretty simple!
Thanks,
BEN

Looks to me like you have bzip2 installed, your error message says;

tar: bzip2: Cannot exec: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

See, it says "No such file or directory", that is the file skype_ver-0_92_0_2.tar.bz2 does not exist in the directory that you opened the shell in. It may be that you need to cd into a different directory or it may be that you've mispelled the name of the file. It has to be exactly right or you'll get your error.
If you didn't have the right tools installed the error message would have been "command not found".

well I navigated to the right directory - I checked the contents with the ls command to make sure I had the package I wanted there.
Then I typed in the instruction, followed by the name of the package. I highlighted it from the list produced by ls. then copied and pasted, so all that should have been good right?
I must be missing something simple...

Are your permissions right? Maybe you can try to run bunzip2 directly on the file then untar it. I always do this cos I can never remember the option for bzip2.

Sorry, that was wrong what I wrote before.
bunzip2: command not found : seems clear enough, but just to be extra sure, try using the command bzip2 . On my system bunzip2 is a symbolic link pointing at bzip2 so it's possible all that's missing is that symbolic link. But I'm clutching at straws, it looks like you need to install bzip2. These instructions work well for me. untar the source and cd into it with

tar xzf bzip2-1.0.2.tar.gz && cd bzip2-1.0.2

Then follow the commands on that page