View gzipped file content in hadoop

The following will show you the specified number of lines without decompressing the whole file:

hadoop fs -cat /hdfs_location/part-00000.gz | zcat | head -n 20

The following will page the file, also without first decompressing the whole of it:

hadoop fs -cat /hdfs_location/part-00000.gz | zmore

Try the following, should work as long as your file isn't too big (since the whole thing will be decompressed):

hadoop fs -text /myfolder/part-r-00024.gz | tail