[hooverm]

I have some .gz files that I am trying to expand but I am unable to. Whenever I double click on the files I get an error message reading: Unable to unarchive "filename" into "foldername".
I tried using terminal with the command gunzip and then the file name. All I get is a line reading: No such file or directory.
How can I expand these files?

[albloom]

Drop it on Stuffit Expander.

[bastion]

How confident are you that they're really gzip files?

It might be worthwhile to open a terminal, type 'file ' (with a trailing space, but no quotes), drag one of those files you can't expand to the terminal window and hit return.

Also, is there more to the error? I just tried to force an error here and I got the same message you did but also got a second line offering a specific error code.

[hooverm]

Yes, I did get another specific error line: "Error 1 - Operation not permitted."

I have tried Stuffit, it returns, "Unable to determine file format." and then says the file does not appear to be compressed or encoded.

I tried terminal with the command "file", after I hit return it says "packed data"
I tried "gunzip" again in terminal and now depending on which file I use it either reads, "invalid compressed data -- Huffman code > 32 bits" or "Bad table"

[bastion]

hooverm said:

Yes, I did get another specific error line: "Error 1 - Operation not permitted."

I have tried Stuffit, it returns, "Unable to determine file format." and then says the file does not appear to be compressed or encoded.

I tried terminal with the command "file", after I hit return it says "packed data"
I tried "gunzip" again in terminal and now depending on which file I use it either reads, "invalid compressed data -- Huffman code > 32 bits" or "Bad table"

Those responses pretty much scream that your .gz files aren't really .gz files. Even the response from file - "packed data" - isn't really consistent with a gzip archive from any version of the file command I have here.

New terminal command:

hexdump -C | head

This should give you the first 128 or so bytes of the file, in a format that we can examine to see what kind of data it really is. I have a hunch the 1st two bytes are going to be 1F and 1E.

[hooverm]

I ran hexdump, here are the first few lines:

00000000 1f 9d e3 45 8b cb 91 8e 25 56 25 48 fe 3f ff 00 |...E....%V%H.?..|
00000010 6d bf 16 dd f8 d7 4b fe c7 d7 bc 33 36 93 e0 cf |m.....K....36...|
00000020 1b 5b 5a c9 e1 6b 6d 52 5b ed 1e d7 4e b4 49 e4 |.[Z..kmR[...N.I.|

[bastion]

hooverm said:

I ran hexdump, here are the first few lines:

00000000 1f 9d e3 45 8b cb 91 8e 25 56 25 48 fe 3f ff 00 |...E....%V%H.?..|
00000010 6d bf 16 dd f8 d7 4b fe c7 d7 bc 33 36 93 e0 cf |m.....K....36...|
00000020 1b 5b 5a c9 e1 6b 6d 52 5b ed 1e d7 4e b4 49 e4 |.[Z..kmR[...N.I.|

That's not gzip. That's compress. The extension should be a capital Z. Brain-dead programs that don't know how to read signature bytes should like it better if you change that.

Out of curiosity, what OS version are you using? The guess I made about what the first two bytes would be was based on the fact that that was the only one in file's database that had the description "packed data." For me, the above is listed as "compress'd data."

[hooverm]

ok, did that, but still get "Error 1 - Operation not permitted." when I try to open it.

I also tried uncompress in terminal, which responds:
Inappropriate file type or format

I'm using OS X 10.4

and I tried Stuffit again, but it still doesn't work.

[bastion]

Then they're corrupted, and your only real option is to try to get a new copy of the archives or their contained data from another source.