Linux Unzip Command: Extract Zip Files With Examples

You’ve downloaded a .zip file to your server. Now what? On most Linux systems, double-clicking isn’t an option. The unzip command is how you crack open zip archives from the terminal, and unlike tar or gzip, it doesn’t come pre-installed on every distro.

That distinction matters. Plenty of sysadmins SSH into a fresh VPS, type unzip, and get slapped with “command not found.” It’s a rite of passage, really. The utility handles zip file extraction with a set of options that cover everything from basic one-file unpacking to selective extraction with pattern matching and password-protected archives.

This guide walks through installation, everyday extraction tasks, scripting, and the gotchas that trip people up. We’ll also compare unzip against tar and gzip so you know when to reach for which tool.

How to Install Unzip on Linux

Before you can extract anything, you need the utility installed. The process depends on your distro’s package manager.

Debian and Ubuntu

On Debian-based systems like Ubuntu and Linux Mint, APT handles everything. Update your package index first to make sure you’re pulling the latest version:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Then install unzip:

sudo apt install unzip

On older releases that haven’t switched to the new apt syntax, you might need apt-get install unzip instead. Same result, older syntax. Both pull from the same repos.

CentOS, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux

RHEL derivatives split between two package managers depending on version. CentOS 7 and older use yum. CentOS Stream 8+, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux use dnf. The commands look nearly identical:

sudo yum install unzip

Or on newer systems:

sudo dnf install unzip

Either way, update your repos first with yum update or dnf update. On a minimal server install, unzip almost certainly isn’t there. That’s true for both container images and fresh VM deployments, so budget an extra thirty seconds during provisioning.

Verify the Installation

Run this regardless of distro:

unzip -v

If it prints a version number and build info, you’re set. If it prints nothing useful, something went wrong with the install.

How to Zip and Unzip Files in Linux

With unzip installed, you can start extracting. The following sections cover the most common scenarios you’ll hit in day-to-day work.

Heads up: Your filesystem’s size limits can reject large extractions silently. If unzip throws an error on a big archive, check your disk space and inode limits before blaming the tool.

How to Unzip a File in Linux

The basic syntax is dead simple. Navigate to the directory containing your archive and run:

unzip archive_file.zip

That dumps everything into your current working directory. You need read-write permissions on that directory, obviously. If permissions are wrong, you’ll get a stream of “permission denied” errors and nothing gets extracted.

If the archive lives somewhere else, pass the full path:

unzip /home/user/downloads/archive_file.zip

The extracted files still land in your current directory, not the archive’s directory. That trips people up constantly. You downloaded it to /tmp but you’re sitting in /root? Congrats, your root home directory now has a bunch of unexpected files in it.

How to Unzip Multiple Files at Once

Got a folder full of zip files? Use a wildcard:

unzip '*.zip'

The quotes matter. Without them, your shell tries to expand the glob before unzip sees it, which leads to weird errors when you’ve got more than one archive. Bash and zsh both do this, and the error messages aren’t helpful at all.

If the files share a naming pattern like backup-1.zip, backup-2.zip, narrow it down:

unzip 'backup-*.zip'

Some shells also need a backslash escape instead of quotes. If one method fails, try the other. It’s one of those “works on my machine” things that depends on your shell configuration.

Unzip to a Specific Directory in Linux

The -d flag lets you extract to a target folder without cd-ing around:

unzip archive_file.zip -d /target/folder/destination

The path can be absolute or relative. If the target directory doesn’t exist, unzip creates it for you. This is one of the most-used options because it keeps your working directory clean and puts files exactly where you want them.

You can even combine source and destination paths in a single command, pulling from one place and dropping into another:

unzip /origin/path/archive_file.zip -d /target/folder/destination

No need to move anywhere. Run it from wherever you are. On a server with dozens of directories and a complex folder structure, this saves a surprising amount of time.

Extract Specific Files From a Zip Archive

A zip archive usually contains dozens of files. You don’t always need all of them. Extract a single file by naming it:

unzip file_archive.zip file1.txt

Extract a specific folder the same way:

unzip file_archive.zip folder_name/

For nested items, provide the full path within the archive:

unzip file_archive.zip directory/path/target_file.txt

Need everything except a few files? The -x flag excludes items:

unzip file_archive.zip -x file_1.txt file_2.txt

This is useful when an archive contains a config file you’ve already customized and don’t want overwritten. Or when you’re doing a partial update and only need specific pieces from a large deployment package. Server administrators use this pattern constantly when archives contain dozens or hundreds of files but only a handful are relevant.

Unzip a Password-Protected Zip File

If you try to extract an encrypted zip without providing a password, the terminal prompts you for one. You can type it there, but for scripting, that’s useless. The -P flag (capital P) passes the password inline:

unzip -P yourpassword file_archive.zip

Security warning: This exposes the password in your shell history and process list. On a shared server, anyone running ps aux can see it. Fine for automated pipelines on isolated machines. Terrible for multi-user systems.

Using Unzip in Bash Automation Scripts

Admins who deal with recurring zip files (backups, log exports, data dumps) shouldn’t run unzip by hand every time. That’s what scripts are for. Wrap the extraction logic in a bash file, add some cleanup logic, and you’ve got something that runs unattended.

Here’s a practical example that extracts a log archive and rotates old logs:

#!/bin/bash
log_archive="/path/to/logs/log_archive.zip"
log_destination="/path/to/extracted/logs/"
max_logs=5

unzip "$log_archive" -d "$log_destination"

cd "$log_destination" || exit
log_files=($(ls -1t *.log))

if [ ${#log_files[@]} -gt $max_logs ]; then
  excess_logs=$(( ${#log_files[@]} - max_logs ))
  for ((i = 0; i < excess_logs; i++)); do
    rm "${log_files[$i]}"
  done
fi

Save it as unzip_log.sh, make it executable with chmod +x unzip_log.sh, and run it. To automate daily extraction, add a cron job:

0 2 * * * /path/to/unzip_log.sh

That fires the script at 2 AM every day. Adjust the schedule to match your log rotation needs.

Combine Unzip With Other Linux Commands

Linux shines when you chain commands together. The unzip utility is no exception. Piping output between tools lets you build extraction workflows that handle complex scenarios in a single line.

Find and extract every zip file in a directory tree:

find /path/to/zips -type f -name '*.zip' -exec unzip {} -d /path/to/destination/ \;

Extract only files matching a pattern from an archive using grep and awk:

unzip archive.zip $(unzip -l archive.zip | grep 'pattern' | awk '{print $4}')

What’s happening here: unzip -l lists the archive contents, grep filters by your pattern, awk grabs the filename column, and the outer unzip extracts those specific files. It’s ugly, it works, and you’ll use it more often than you’d expect.

Unzip vs Tar and Gzip: Key Differences

Linux has multiple archive and compression formats. The main ones you’ll encounter are .zip, .tar, .tar.gz (or .tgz), and .gz. They’re not interchangeable, and picking the wrong tool wastes time.

The zip format bundles files and compresses them in one step. It supports password protection natively and works on Windows, macOS, and Linux without extra software. That cross-platform compatibility is why zip files are still everywhere, especially when someone on a Windows machine sends you something.

Tar, by contrast, only archives. It bundles files into a single .tar file without compression. You pipe it through gzip to get a .tar.gz, which then compresses the whole bundle. Two steps, two tools. The compression ratio tends to be better than zip because gzip sees the entire archive as one stream rather than compressing each file individually. To extract:

tar -xf archive.tar
gunzip archive.tar.gz

On Linux servers, .tar.gz dominates. Most source code packages, config backups, and installation bundles ship in that format because tar and gzip come pre-installed everywhere. The zip format requires installing unzip first, which is a small annoyance but a real one when you’re provisioning machines at scale or building container images where every added package increases the image size.

For desktop Linux, GUI tools like PeaZip handle all formats through a point-and-click interface. Convenient for personal use, but you can’t script a GUI. Stick with command-line tools for anything that needs to be repeatable or automated.

Best Practices for Managing Zip Files

Extracting files is easy. Extracting them safely and without breaking things takes a little more thought.

Check Archive File Integrity

Don’t blindly extract archives, especially ones downloaded from the internet. Malicious zip files exist, and they can contain anything from malware to zip bombs that eat all your disk space. A zip bomb is a small archive that expands into petabytes of data. Your server runs out of disk space, services crash, and you spend the next hour cleaning up.

First, list the contents without extracting:

unzip -l downloaded_file.zip

Scan the filenames. Anything suspicious (executables you didn’t expect, paths that try to escape the directory with ../, or files with absurdly large uncompressed sizes) is a red flag.

Verify the checksum against the source:

md5sum downloaded_file.zip

Compare the output to whatever checksum the download page provides. If they don’t match, the file was corrupted or tampered with during transfer.

You can also test the archive’s structural integrity:

unzip -t downloaded_file.zip

This runs through the zip without actually writing files. If anything’s broken inside, it’ll tell you.

Preserve Existing Files and Permissions

The default behavior of unzip overwrites files with matching names. On a production server, that can ruin your day in about two seconds. Imagine extracting a config archive that silently replaces your carefully tuned nginx.conf with a default version. The -n flag prevents it:

unzip -n archive.zip

With -n, existing files stay untouched. The extraction skips any file that already exists in the target directory. No confirmation prompts, no drama. This is the flag you want when doing partial updates or restoring specific files from a backup.

File permissions are the other thing that goes wrong. Your archive might contain files with permissions set to 777 (wide open) or 000 (locked out entirely). If preserving the original permissions matters, use -o:

unzip -o archive.zip

This keeps whatever permissions the files had when they were zipped. Whether that’s good or bad depends on who created the archive and how security-conscious they were. Always review permissions after extraction on anything facing the public internet.

FAQ: Linux Unzip Command

How do I unzip a file in Linux terminal?

Run unzip filename.zip and the contents extract to your current directory. If you want them somewhere else, add –d /target/path to specify the destination. That’s the entire workflow for 90% of use cases. If the file is password-protected, add -P followed by the password before the filename.

How do I install unzip on Ubuntu?

Two commands: sudo apt update to refresh your package list, then sudo apt install unzip to install the utility. Takes about five seconds on a decent connection. Verify with unzip -v to confirm it’s working.

What is the difference between unzip and tar?

Unzip handles .zip files, which bundle and compress in a single format with optional password protection. Tar archives files without compressing them; you need gzip or bzip2 on top of tar for compression. Zip is more portable across operating systems since Windows handles it natively. Tar is more common on Linux servers because tar and gzip ship with every distro. The compression ratio with tar.gz tends to be slightly better since gzip compresses the archive as a single stream.

How to unzip files to a specific folder?

Use the -d option: unzip archive.zip -d /target/path. The directory gets created if it doesn’t exist. Works with both absolute and relative paths. You can combine it with a source path too, so unzip /downloads/file.zip -d /var/www/html extracts from one location into another without any cd commands.

Wrapping Up

The unzip command does one thing and does it well: it cracks open zip archives on Linux. Install it through your distro’s package manager (apt, yum, or dnf), learn the -d, -n, and -l flags, and you’ve covered 95% of real-world scenarios. Most of what you’ll do with unzip fits into a single line.

For anything more complex (batch extraction across directory trees, log rotation, pattern-based filtering) wrap unzip in a bash script and schedule it with cron. Chain it with find and grep for workflows that would take forever to do manually.

And always, always check archive integrity before extracting files from untrusted sources. List the contents with -l, verify the checksum with md5sum, and test with -t. It takes ten extra seconds and prevents the kind of incidents that generate incident reports. Your future self will thank you.