Published on

Fix: tar (child): bzip2: Cannot exec: No such file or directory

Authors

Detailed Error Message

$ sudo tar -xjf latest.tar.bz2

tar (child): bzip2: Cannot exec: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Fix

The issue occurs because the system lacks the bzip2 package, which is needed to extract .tar.bz2 files. Here's how to fix it:

  1. Install bzip2: This is likely missing from your system.

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install bzip2
    
  2. Retry Extraction: Once bzip2 is installed, you should be able to extract the file:

    sudo tar -xjf latest.tar.bz2
    

This should solve the issue.