gzip: stdin: not in gzip format tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I have a Bash script that creates a .tar.gz file, encrypts, and then sends it to a drive. However, I cannot open the .tar.gz file afterwards. Here is my process...

Bash script that encrypts.

#!/bin/sh # Tar the automysqlbackup directory tar -zcf "red-backup-$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').tar.gz" /var/lib/automysqlbackup/ # Encrypt the tar file openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -in "red-backup-$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').tar.gz" -out "red-backup-$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').tar.gz.enc" -pass 'pass:MySecretPWD' # Remove the original tar file rm -rf "red-backup-$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').tar.gz" # Upload to Google Drive gdrive upload --file "red-backup-$(date '+%Y-%m-%d').tar.gz.enc" -p "jofhriout849uioejfoiu09" 

Then I download the file and use

sudo openssl aes-256-cbc -e -in red-backup-2016-09-22.tar.gz.enc -out red-backup-2016-09-22.tar.gz 

I then enter the passphrase for my file twice and I now get a file called

red-backup-2016-09-22.tar.gz 

When I then try

sudo tar -zxvf red-backup-2016-09-22.tar.gz 

I get

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now 

I have also tried renaming the file .tar and also tried

sudo tar xvf red-backup-2016-09-22.tar.gz 

and

sudo tar xvf red-backup-2016-09-22.tar tar: This does not look like a tar archive tar: Skipping to next header tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors 

Where am I going wrong?

9 Answers

This means the file isn't really a gzipped tar file -- or any kind of gzipped file -- in spite of being named like one.

When you download a file with wget, check for indications like Length: unspecified [text/html] which shows it is plain text (text) and that it is intended to be interpreted as html. Check the wget output below -

wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "" --2017-10-12 12:39:40-- Resolving download.oracle.com (download.oracle.com)... 23.72.136.27, 23.72.136.67 Connecting to download.oracle.com (download.oracle.com)|23.72.136.27|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Not Allowed Location: [following] --2017-10-12 12:39:40-- Resolving XXXX (XXXXX)... XXX.XX.XX.XXX Connecting to XXXX (XXXX)|XXX.XX.XX.XXX|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 17121 (17K) [text/html] Saving to: ‘jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz’ 100%[=========================================================================================================================================================================>] 17,121 --.-K/s in 0.05s 2017-10-12 12:39:40 (349 KB/s) - ‘jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz’ saved [17121/17121] 

This sort of confirms that you haven't received a gzip file.

For a correct file, the wget output will show something like Length: 185515842 (177M) [application/x-gzip] as shown in the below output -

wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "" --2017-10-12 12:50:06-- Resolving download.oracle.com (download.oracle.com)... XX.XXX.XX.XX, XX.XX.XXX.XX Connecting to download.oracle.com (download.oracle.com)|XX.XX.XXX.XX|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily Location: [following] --2017-10-12 12:50:06-- Resolving edelivery.oracle.com (edelivery.oracle.com)... XXX.XX.XXX.XX, 2600:1404:16:188::2d3e, 2600:1404:16:180::2d3e Connecting to edelivery.oracle.com (edelivery.oracle.com)|XXX.XX.XX.XXX|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily Location: [following] --2017-10-12 12:50:07-- Connecting to download.oracle.com (download.oracle.com)|XX.XX.XXX.XX|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 185515842 (177M) [application/x-gzip] Saving to: ‘jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz’ 100%[=========================================================================================================================================================================>] 185,515,842 6.60MB/s in 28s 2017-10-12 12:50:34 (6.43 MB/s) - ‘jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz’ saved [185515842/185515842] 

The above shows a correct gzip application file has been downloaded.

You can also file, head, less, view utilities to check the file. For example, an HTML file would give the below output -

head jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz 

Output:

<!doctype html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link href="/css/print.css" rel="stylesheet" media="print"> <link href="/css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen"> <link href="/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet"> 

The above shows it is indeed an HTML page which we are trying to unzip/untar - something that won't work. If it was indeed a correct zip file (binary in nature) the output of head would have produced garbage - something like below -

head jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz 

Output:

x�rY�[ms�F������ڍtіl���DR���Ŋ��j $�$,`0�h�_����/��=�@Q�w+��ձ*�Hbfz�{�~�{�i�x��k����޾}����z���w����g�����{�޼�;{s����w���⹳�7�N����i� �����} �¿g��������ק���7��s�����폺î߹�����~i��j�/�����޿#���=��=>��߿{}��|�������������3���X���]9�ޠ����u�����%ğ�<^)�H�8�F�R�t�o�L�u��S%�ds5�2_EZn�t^�� �N3��(��<��|'�q���R�N�gq�Uv!�ۻ�p���rL��M��u��.�Q�5�T��BNw�!$��<>�7G'$�,Mt4WY�Gi"�=��p�)�VIN3����\ek��0��G �<L�c�ē�t-���2���G:Ϣia��I�<ʋg3���d�H����[2`�<I�A�6�W��<��C�������h��A0QL�2�4�-* �x���Е�t%t1��f�>+A͂�,Lr� �Fe:MBH��ɩ� C�Q�r�S��<M�b�<,5���@���s��݉c��sp�f�=g��?��k���4�}��kh)�¹Z��#d�*{���-�.N�)�e��s:�H(VQ��3*�$2󞖔��rϨv�"o�_��!A�������B�l=A�|��@��0��1��5��4g� � ���Se����H[2�����t��5�Df����$1���b$� h�Op����!Lvb!p��b�8^�Y���n� O��Ԫ߱��|��lW�lu��*�N�M��� �/�^0~�~�#��q��������K��;�d���aw4����ݎ'�~�7��ky�o���������t�'k��f����!vo���'o��� �.�Pn\� �+��K"FA{����n2����v��!/Ok��r4�c5�x$'�.�&w�!�%�ޠo������2���i �a0��Ag�d����GH)G7~�g���b��%�b��rt�m~� �����t0�� <������������5�q�t��K(��+Z<��=���:1�\�x�p=t�`��G@F�� i�����p8�����H.���dMLE��e[�`�'n��*h[��;�0w'��6A�١M�x�fpeB>&���MO�������`�@á/�"�����(��^���n��=����5��@�Mx��d:\YAn���]|�w>��S��FA9�J�k!�@� 

Try downloading from the official site and check if their download links have changed. Also check your proxy settings and make sure you have the right proxies enabled to download/wget it from the correct source.

First check the type of compression using the file command:

file name_name.tgz 

Output: If the output is " XZ compressed data", then use tar xf <archive name> to unzip the file, e.g.

• tar xf archive.tar.xz

• tar xf archive.tar.gz

• tar xf archive.tar

• tar xf archive.tgz

Just click first on that link and go to the HTML page where actual downloads or mirrors are.

It's really misleading to have a full link which ends in .tgz when it actually leads to an HTML page where the real download links are.

I had this problem downloading Apache Spark and Wget-ing it into Ubuntu.

Initially, check the type of compression with the below command:

`file <file_name>` 

If the output is a POSIX compressed file, use the below command to uncompress:

`tar xvf <file_name>` 

Sometimes the .gz extension is wrongfully appended to the filename.

• Run file foo.csv.gz to know the actual file type.
• Rename the file to foo.csv or whatever the actual file type is.

Add "-O file.tgz" or "-O file.tar.gz" at the end of the wget command and extract "file.tgz" or "file.tar.gz".

Here is the sample code for Google Colaboratory:

!wget -q --trust-server-names -O file.tgz print("Download completed successfully !!!") !tar zxvf file.tgz 

Note: Please ensure that the http path for tgz is valid and the file is not corrupted.

cd /Whatever/Directory/Path/The/File/Is/In chmod +x xampp-linux-x64-7.0.6-0-installer.run sudo ./xampp-linux-x64-7.0.6-0-installer.run 

It works.

For more information, refer to Installing XAMPP on Linux Mint.

unxz worked for me:

sudo unxz fileName.xz 

This is probably because of your gzip version incompatibility.

Check these points first:

which gzip

/usr/bin/gzip or /bin/gzip

It should be either /bin/gzip or /usr/bin/gzip. If your gzip points to some other gzip application, please try by removing that path from your PATH environment variable.

Next is

gzip -V

gzip 1.3.5 (2002-09-30)

Your problem can be resolved with these check points.