Tar

The following command creates a single archive backup file called my_home_directory.tar under /tmp. This archive will contain all the files and subdirectories under /home/jsmith.

Option c, stands for create an archive.
Option v stands for verbose mode, displays additional information while executing the command.
Option f indicates the archive file name mentioned in the command.
```
# tar cvf /tmp/my_home_directory.tar /home/jsmith
```

How do I view all the files inside the tar archive? Option t will display all the files from the tar archive.

# tar tvf /tmp/my_home_directory.tar

How do I extract all the files from a tar archive? Option x will extract the files from the tar archive as shown below. This will extract the content to the current directory location from where the command is executed.

# tar xvf /tmp/my_home_directory.tar

How do I extract tar.gz files to a specific directory?

# tar xvfz /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.gz –C /home/ramesh

How to use gzip with tar? Add option z to the tar command when dealing with tar.gz compressed file.

# tar cvfz /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.gz /home/jsmith
# tar xvfz /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.gz
# tar tvfz /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.gz

Note: Using gzip is faster when compared to bzip2.

How to use bzip2 with tar? Add option j to the tar command when dealing with tar.bz2 compressed file.

# tar cvfj /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.bz2 /home/jsmith
# tar xvfj /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.bz2
# tar tvfj /tmp/my_home_directory.tar.bz2

Note: Using bizp2 gives higher level of compression when compared to gzip.

tar command examples

Create a new tar archive.

$ tar cvf archive_name.tar dirname/

Extract from an existing tar archive.

$ tar xvf archive_name.tar

View an existing tar archive.

$ tar tvf archive_name.tar

TAR

Tar

tar command examples

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