HELP! having troulbe with tar.gz files

[cotfessi]

I'm tryng to do the foolowing command on a file that ends in *.tar.gz

$ tar xvzf something.tar.gz

and i get this error:

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format

what am I doing wrong?? I know that I have unzipped things before! This seems to happen on all *.tar.gz files

[lombardp]

I believe what you have to do if its a .gz is use gunzip <filename> then you can use the tar xvzf <filename>.

[TheGimp]

that would be tar xvf filename
z tells tar to un gzip the archive.

cotfessi: your file is either corrupt or in the wrong format.

[Gweedo]

If it is giving a gzip error like you described the file is bad. redownload it and run tar -xzvf <filename>