Is there a terminal tool (linux) for repairing corrupted zip files?

Question

I've a corrupt zip file. I've tried to repair it with

zip -F file.zip

and

zip -FF file.zip

but was not successful. Is there another terminal tool under Linux for repairing zip files?

score 153 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 11 '11 at 18:44

153

try this

zip -FF Corrupted.zip --out New.zip

This will scan the corrupted zip archive and make a new one eliminating the errors.

As a result you will get a new zip file. Then simply run this command.

unzip New.zip

Hope this helps.

answered Dec 11 '11 at 18:44

Desi

score 32 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

Just referenced this question in my answer to a similar one - Linux Mint 12 - how to open a .zip file in terminal

It is worth adding here what the zip manual currently says about the difference between -F and -FF:

The single -F is more reliable if the archive is not too much damaged, so try this option first.

So the first attempt would be:

zip -F broken.zip --out fixed.zip
unzip fixed.zip

And if that doesn't work:

zip -FF broken.zip --out fixed.zip
unzip fixed.zip

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 02 '21 at 07:38

I recently encountered a .zip file that neither zip -F file.zip nor zip -FF file.zip could fix. However,

7z x file.zip

was able to extract all the files. Hence, trying out p7zip could be a good idea. If needed, you can then pack the extracted files into a new archive.

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 30 '09 at 04:59

6

DiskInternals ZIP Repair works perfectly under Wine it's saved me in the past.

answered Aug 30 '09 at 04:59

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 13 '09 at 21:24

5

I'm not aware of a program that will do a better job repairing the archive though.

You might try

unzip -vt file.zip

just to see if maybe you can extract some of the files safely, or figure out which files in the archive are corrupt.

answered Aug 13 '09 at 21:24

Guy

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 23 '22 at 07:39

Due to permission errors, a ZIP process of mine crashed consistently before moving the temporary ZIP file into the final ZIP file.

The result was a folder full of temporary files named zi<random>, e.g. zi0Be571a.

zip -F did not work, nor did zip -FF, 7z x, ziprecover. The error was that the file did not contain a central directory.

On Windows, WinRAR gave an error but did display the (partial) file contents.

DiskInternals ZipRecover was able to scan the temporary file and reconstruct the central directory, yielding a perfectly recovered Zip file.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 01 '24 at 04:41

The man page of zip explains:

The -FF option may create an inconsistent archive. Depending on what is damaged, you can then use the -F option to fix that archive.

So, you run:

zip -FF damaged.zip --out fix1.zip
zip -F fix1.zip --out fix2.zip
unzip fix2.zip

This approach worked for my damaged zip file.

7 Answers7