Begginers problem : tar: Error opening archive: Can't initialize filter; unable to run program "bzip2 -d

[Michael Torrie]

On 12/29/2018 01:15 AM, Rand .J wrote:
> I'm trying to run this code from : https://github.com/pnnl/*safekit* ,using
> cmd on windows 10, I already installed python. when I type the command: tar
> -xjvf data_examples.tar.bz2
> 
> I keep getting the error: tar: Error opening archive: Can't initialize
> filter; unable to run program "bzip2 -d"

It means that tar is unable to run bzip2 as a child process. Most likely
it simply cannot find it.
> I have tried to download bzip2 through easy-7 zip and GnuWin32 , but it
> didn't work. Can any one help me? Thank you

Is bzip2 in the path? Can you run it from the command line by itself?
Try just typing this at cmd: bzip2 --help

If that won't work, then you need to put bzip2 in the system PATH so tar
can find it.

Normally I run tar and friends via either cygwin or MingW's MSYS
environment where tar and bzip2 are installed from packages and are
already in the right place.