Linux how to install tar file

How do I install a .tar.gz (or .tar.bz2) file?

I have downloaded tar.gz files. But I don’t know how to install it. How do I install this kind of file?

As mentioned in some of the answers below, try hard not to install packages via tarball as it will often bork managed packages and get you into in unresolvable state, and make you very sad. Installing via package manager is preferrable in 99.14159265% of cases.

14 Answers 14

The first thing you need to do is extract the files from inside the tar archive to a folder. Let’s copy the files to your desktop. You can extract an archive by right-clicking the archive file’s icon inside your file browser and pressing the appropriate entry in the context menu. Extracting the archive should create a new folder with a similar name. e.g. program-1.2.3 . Now you need to open your terminal and navigate to that directory using the following command:

cd /home/yourusername/Desktop/program-1.2.3 

Make sure you read a file called INSTALL , INSTALL.txt , README , or something similar if one was extracted. You can check if such a file exists from the terminal by using the ls command. The file can be opened and read with the command:

Where INSTALL is the name of your file. This file will contain the right steps to follow to continue the installation process. Usually, the three «classical» steps are:

./configure make sudo make install 

You may also need to install some dependencies if, for example, running configure prompted you with an error listing which dependencies you are missing.

Remember that your mileage may vary.

I would very much recommend using checkinstall, as that will make uninstalling the application much easier.

these are instructions for a specific case. a more common case I run into does not require compiling, the important information to know is where in my filesystem I should move it and how to make .desktop icon file

Tarballs are used to distribute source code almost every time. If you have any specific example of unusual tarball, you may consider adding it as an answer and that would be a specific case.

You cannot «install» a .tar.gz file or .tar.bz2 file. .tar.gz files are gzip-compressed tarballs, compressed archives like .zip files. .bz2 files are compressed with bzip2. You can extract .tar.gz files using:

Similarly you can extract .tar.bz2 files with

If you would like to see the files being extracted during unpacking, add v :

Even if you have no Internet connection, you can still use Ubuntu’s package management system, just download the .deb files from http://packages.ubuntu.com/. Do not forget to download dependencies too.

For an easier way to install packages offline, see the question How can I install software offline?.

@AlwaysLearning How can you post a comment here without an Internet connection. Try the linked «How can I install software offline» link.

Sometimes there is actually no need for an installation. One has only to copy/move the archived files to the right folder: First, find out where the current installation resides, e.g., via which . Then move the extracted contents of tar.gz archive to that folder to overwrite the contents.

How you compile a program from a source

1. Open a console
2. Use the command cd to navigate to the correct folder. If there is a README file with installation instructions, use that instead.
3. Extract the files with one of the commands
   • If it’s tar.gz use tar xvzf PACKAGENAME.tar.gz
   • if it’s a tar.bz2 use tar xvjf PACKAGENAME.tar.bz2
4. ./configure
5. make
6. sudo make install (or with checkinstall )

Download a package from the software sources or the software center.

If you install a package via the software sources and not downloading the package on your own, you will get new updates to that package and install them via the Update Manager.

You could just install MYPACKAGE by typing in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install MYPACKAGE 

or by using the software center and searching for MYPACKAGE . But if it’s not there go with the source.

Well, more generic instructions would be «download the file, unpack and look for install instructions either inside or on the website».

I’ve never got any instructions for installing from a source, I only get a folder with some install.sh or configure files. What sources do you download?

@Alvar: ./configure && make && sudo make install assumes that the package uses an autoconf style of configuring and compiling programs. You should search for the files INSTALL , README or similar. Also, make install won’t work if the prefix is set to a privileged location (which is the default). Therefore, use sudo make install or install it into a directory in the home directory using ./configure —prefix=~/yourprogram . Then put ~/yourprogram/bin in your $PATH or make symlinks to it in ~/bin/ .

Notice that the part about k3b is because this answer was merged from another question (which, I presume, was about installing k3b from source). So if you’re not trying to install k3b, don’t follow that! Not saying that k3b is bad though =P

This is only for .tar.* files which have the code pre-compiled but packed into a tar file.

Okay, this is a fairly challenging task for a beginner, but just follow my instructions, and it should be fine.

First off, download the .tar.* file, and save it. Don’t open it. (In these examples, I’ll be installing the Dropbox Beta build, because I was going to install it anyway, so I figured that I might as well document the installation.)

After you’ve downloaded your file, (assuming that you saved it to Downloads ,) type the following:

cd Downloads sudo cp dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.5.36.tar.gz /opt/ 

NOTE: use the name of whatever file you downloaded. (e.g., for the Firefox Nightly 19.0a1 64-bit build, you would type sudo cp firefox-19.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 /opt/ )

Now, change to the /opt/ directory, extract the program, and remove the old file:

cd /opt/ sudo tar -xvf dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.5.36.tar.gz sudo rm -rf dropbox-lnx.x86_64-1.5.36.tar.gz 

(again, use the name of the downloaded file. Don’t forget the extension.)

Okay, check to see what the extracted folder is called:

you’ll get something like this:

james@james-OptiPlex-GX620:/opt$ ls -a . .. .dropbox-dist james@james-OptiPlex-GX620:/opt$ 

Okay, in our example, we installed Dropbox, and the only folder there is called .dropbox-dist . That’s probably the folder we want, so plug that in to the next step (add a / to the end, since it’s a folder.):

sudo chmod 777 .dropbox-dist/ 

Okay, it’s now marked as executable, so it’s time to create a symbolic link (this is what allows you to run it from the Terminal):

sudo ln -s /opt/.dropbox-dist/ /usr/bin/dropbox 

NOTE: this is sudo ln -s /opt// /usr/bin/ . Be sure that is replaced with the simplified, lower-case version of the program’s name (e.g., for Firefox Nightly, type firefox-nightly ; for the uTorrent server, type utserver . Whatever you type here will be the command that you use whenever running the program from the Terminal. Think of /usr/bin/ as like the PATH variable on Windows systems.)

Okay, you’re done. The program is now installed and runnable from the Terminal.
What’s this? You say you want to run it from the launcher, AND you want it to have an icon? No problem!

This part is fairly simple:

gksu gedit /usr/share/applications/dropbox.desktop 

NOTE: If you’re installing OVER a previous installation, use ls -a /usr/share/applications and search for pre-existing .desktop file. Plug that file’s name in instead.

Now, here’s where you create the icon. Here’s good template; edit it appropriately.

[Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Name=Firefox Nightly Comment=Browse the World Wide Web GenericName=Web Browser Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer Exec=firefox-nightly Terminal=false X-MultipleArgs=false Type=Application Icon=/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser; MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall; StartupNotify=true Actions=NewWindow; [Desktop Action NewWindow] Name=Open a New Window Exec=firefox-nightly -new-window OnlyShowIn=Unity; 

You may want to leave off the MimeType option completely. That could be very bad if you didn’t.

Now, click «Save», close it out, and you’re in business!

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How to install tarball (.tar) files in linux

Does it happen to you that you that whenever you want to install a piece of software you’re give either a .deb file or a .tar file. Installing .deb files is easy, it’s just like how you do in windows, but .tar files are a pain specially for beginners.
In this simple tutorial we’ll learn how to download and install .tar file. I’ll use Ubuntu but it should work in most Linux distros. I’ll install *waterfox web browser * but the process is similar for all the tarball (.tar) installation files.

tldr;

1. download the tar file
2. extract it to some location
3. create a desktop entry for running the application

Detailed method

Step 1 :download the .tar file and then move it to the directory where you want to install it.

After downloading the file open the terminal in current directory to move the file to /opt directory using the following command.
you can change the filename and target directory accordingly.

sudo mv waterfox-G4.0.5.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 /opt 

Step 2: Extract the .tar file

first goto the directory where you moved the .tar file.

To extract the .tar file present in the current directory to use the following command

sudo tar xjf waterfox-G4.0.5.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 

you can replace the .tar filename i.e. waterfox-G4.0.5.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 as per your filename.

Step 3: Create desktop entry with appropriate permissions

make yourself owner of the extracted repository

sudo chown -R $USER /opt/waterfox 

Create a desktop entry so that you don’t need to come to this directory to launch the application.
run the following command

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/waterfox.desktop 

it’ll open gedit text editor where you need to insert the specifications of the desktop entry.
paste the following in the editor and save.

[Desktop Entry] Name=Waterfox Exec=/opt/waterfox/waterfox %u Terminal=false Icon=/opt/waterfox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png Type=Application Categories=Application;Network;X-Developer; 

Again, change the various parameters and paths according to your setup.
The path can be directly under the first directory or inside bin directory, make sure you specify correct path.

Desktop entry has many parameters but only a few are required but you should add at least these. You can read more at Desktop Entry Standard

Finally you need to make your desktop entry executable using the following command.

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/waterfox.desktop 

you can change the name of desktop entry accordingly.

finally you can remove the .tar file using the following command

sudo rm -rf waterfox*.tar.bz2 

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how to install .tar.xz file in ubuntu

i am new in Linux. Generally i install software by internet, but i think it is not a good approach to depend on internet all the times. Then i downloaded a vlc .tar.xz file. then searched Internet how to install .tar.xz. But unable to install. The command i written and result got given below..

ubuntu@ubuntu-HP:~/programs$ tar -zxvf vlc-2.0.6.tar.xz gzip: stdin: not in gzip format tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now ubuntu@ubuntu-HP:~/programs$ tar -zxf vlc-2.0.6.tar.xz gzip: stdin: not in gzip format tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now 

If you are new to linux, you may not be aware that you will generally want to install applications from the repositories, which are packaged and ready to install. Go to the Software Center in the menu, search and install it from there. If you don’t then please edit the question to explain why, as there are often better options than trying to install an app in the way you describe.

@paul, i installed software form there many times, but now i think i should know the way how to install without software center

@BlackSwan Well, you maybe should be able to do so but one cannot recommend to do that. Always prefer repo-packages. Anyway, how to «install»?: Just extract the files, compile them if needed (instructions should be in README or similar files) and copy them somewhere handy. For a system-wide installation to /usr/bin the binaries etc., but you might need to reconfigure the program to use /usr/lib as library-path etc. Instead of copying, make install might just work fine.

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