Unzip returns “Unsupported compression method 14”

Question

I recently downloaded a large number of GIS data files from a government agency to a file server and need to unzip all of them via the command line. However, unzip filename.zip is returning "Unsupported compression method 14". What does this mean? How can I extract the files?

Answer 1

These files were compressed using the LZMA algorithm (possibly using WinZip). LZMA archives are not supported by the unzip command. I found that I could extract these files using 7z instead, as follows:

1. Install p7zip (from source or package manager)
2. 7z x filename.zip