How can I recover files from a corrupted .tar.gz archive?

Question

I have a large number of files in a .tar.gz archive. Checking the file type with the command

file SMS.tar.gz

gives the response

Answer 1

Here is one possible scenario that we encountered. We had a tar.gz file that would not decompress, trying to unzip gave the error:

gzip -d A.tar.gz
gzip: A.tar.gz: invalid compressed data--format violated

I figured out that the file may been originally uploaded over a non binary ftp connection (we don't know for sure).

The solution was relatively simple using the unix dos2unix utility

dos2unix A.tar.gz
dos2unix: converting file A.tar.gz to UNIX format ...
tar -xvf A.tar
file1.txt
file2.txt 
....etc.

It worked! This is one slim possibility, and maybe worth a try - it may help somebody out there.