From alan@ajackson.org
 

I ran into a bzip file today, and realised after I had gone through the gyrations necessary to get it unpacked that this might be
a useful step-by-step. So here it is...
 

Step by step for installing Bzip files

So, you found a neat piece of open source software, and downloaded it, but now you realise that the file you have
is neatprogram-v1.3.tar.bz2 and gunzip and tar refuse to unpack it. What to do?

1. Type "which bunzip2" - if you get a path echoed back, you already have bunzip installed on your system, so you can proceed to step 4.

2. You get no response from the which command. You don't have bunzip installed, so you will need to download it. That means you need to find it first. I generally start with Freshmeat.net, and do a search on their database. In this case, that will
work just fine. Point your browser at http://sourceware.cygnus.com/bzip2/ and download the appropriate
executable. I used PC, Linux 2.0.36 statically linked which worked fine on Caldera Openlinux 1.2.

3. Installing the executable - This is the tricky part. What you have is something like a file named bzip2-095d-x86-linux20. 
 o Test the executable to make certain it works. First type 
  % chmod 755 bzip2-095d-x86-linux20
  and then type 
  % bzip2-095d-x86-linux20 --help

  if it doesn't work, go back and download the source files and   try compiling those.

 o Become root, and move the file to the fairly standard place
  % mv bzip2-095d-x86-linux20 /usr/local/share/bin

 o To get it to run properly, you will need softlinks pointing
   to the executable, in your path. Type in the following 4
   command lines :

   % cd /usr/local/bin
   % ln -s /usr/local/share/bin/bzip2-095d-x86-linux20 bzip2
   % ln -s /usr/local/share/bin/bzip2-095d-x86-linux20 bunzip2
   % ln -s /usr/local/share/bin/bzip2-095d-x86-linux20 bzcat

  Now you should be in business.

4. You have bunzip2 and it works. I like to save a pristine copy
   of source files, and then do all the unpacking and compiling
   in a directory, /tmp/untar.

% cp neatprogram-v1.3.tar.bz2 ~/archive
% mv neatprogram-v1.3.tar.bz2 /tmp/untar
% cd /tmp/untar
% bunzip2 neatprogram-v1.3.tar.bz2
% tar -xvf neatprogram-v1.3.tar
 

5. Now you should go to the Step-by-Step guide for installing
   gzipped tarfiles to complete the installation process.