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How to extract a PBO ?

2 min readUpdated November 2026

Introduction

In this tutorial we will give a quick overview of how PBOs work on Linux. The missions are readable only when they are compressed in (.pbo).

What you need to do

  • First, you need to download Arma3 Tools on Steam which content PBO Manager. You can also download directly PBO Manager via Armaholic.

  • Download your mission file on your FTP (arma3\mpmission\YOUR_MISSION.pbo) .

  • Right click on your file then then pbo manager -> extract to YOUR_MISSIONextract

  • Once modifications are done, you need to reconvert right click -> pbo manager -> pack into YOUR_MISSION.pbo. Be sure to select pbo and not ifa. extract

  • Upload your file, then restart your server.

Troubleshooting: If the file does not compress into .pbo but in .pak, it means that you already haveYOUR_MISSION.pbo present in the file and the manager does not know how to create duplicates.

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