file size looks fine and permissions were fine before you changed them. provide the following output sudo su - cd / tar jxvf /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/OPEN-ROX6.tar.bz2 (if this fails, provide this output also) mkdir /root/tmp cd /root/tmp tar jxvf /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/OPEN-ROX6.tar.bz2