Child process exited with status 254 error when extracting a tar.xz file I'm trying to extract a tar.xz file with tar in Mac OS X Lion. I'm using bsdtar 2.8.3 - libarchive 2.8.3. I'm able to use tar to extract anything else I've tried (.zip, .tar, .tar.gz, etc.), but when I try to extract the file (this file to be precise) using tar -Jxf cclive-0.7.11.tar.xz, I get this error: 

tar: Error opening archive: Child process exited with status 254Child process exited with status 254
Same error here (tried GNU tar and the one included in OS X). 

You are missing the xz compression program which tar tries to use.

Either install a precompiled xz from Sourceforge or, if you are like me, download the source from http://tukaani.org/xz/ and compile it yourself:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install


(Unless told otherwise, ./configure installs xz in /usr/local/bin. You possibly want to add it to $PATH.)

Then:

$ xz --decompress cclive-0.7.11.tar.xz
$ l cclive-0.7.11.tar 
-rw-r--r-- 1 jaume 1832960 2012-12-12 15:18 cclive-0.7.11.tar


Now untar as usual:

$ tar xf cclive-0.7.11.tar