using tar to compress .gz instead of .tar.gz code example
Example 1: unzip tar.gz
tar -xvf file.tar.gz
Example 2: how to extract tar.gz
If your tar file is compressed using a gzip compressor, use the following command to extract it.
$ tar xvzf file.tar.gz
If your tar file is compressed using a bZip2 compressor, use the following command to extract it.
$ tar xvjf file.tar.bz2