Hello y'all. I kinda of need help using the tar command. Yeah, u'll say go read man page, but have done that and can't seem to get an understanding. All I need the usage, and basic explanation. Let's assume I have a directory with files that I need to tar, how do I go about it. Thanks in anticipation.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=basic+tar+linux

EDIT: Sorry, I couldn't resist. Someone sent me one of those "Let Me Google that for you" links and I thought it was hilarious.

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or

depending on if the package is gzipped or bzipped.

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Well, just for good measure here is the man page for tar http://linux.die.net/man/1/tar (found it through pljvaldez's google search


Here are some pertinent items from the man page.
First, some examples... the create archive being the one of interest for you. That will do what you want with the result being a
bzipped file.

What format the resulting file is depends on you options. So the next piece of the man page to look at is the Function letters. as you are creating a new archive file you need to use -c as in the example.

Next there are the common options, as the example shows you need to supply -f followed by the name of the archive file you want to create. The example names it foo.tar.bz2. You can name your archive anything you want, but it is best to use the standard extensions. (tar, tar.bz2, tar.gz)

If you don't provide a compression option, tar will just create a tar file. If you also want to compress the data, then you need to specify a compression option. The example uses -j for bzip. Instead you could use -Z for compress or -z for zipped.
These are found under the All Options section.

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#3 - #4
Valid seven years ago. Still works, but not required :
From /usr/doc/tar-1.15.1/NEWS , slack 10.2

To the OP : 'tar -cf <new-name>.tar <directory>/' : will "tar" your files.

gzip <new-name>.tar : will gzip the newly created tarball. Can be done in one run,
but this way you can check the uncompressed file size.

..

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I had no idea. that saves me a bit of time

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Correct me if am wrong. First you have to create an archive before anything can be done and you create a tar archive using the -c option. After that has been. Done and a tarball has been created, then to compress, you using any of the options -j or -z. To compress your archives in a directory. Right? So let me know if got anything wrong ? Thanks

That's correct. Take in mind what tar has been created for: tar means Tape Archive and it's one of the most ancient Unix commands. It was originally created to store data on magnetic tapes, especially for backups. So the basic idea is to store a bunch of files and the related directory structure in a stream where files are saved sequentially one after another. The tar archive contains information to rebuild the original directory structure, then the data itself. Once you have a single file you can gzip or bzip2 it. The -z and -j option of tar let you spare time, by making a compressed archive in one single step.

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A comment regarding compression. The most common compression algorithms used for tar files are gzip and bzip2. While the latter does indeed result in a smaller file, the time it takes to run compared to gzip can be substantially longer, and the difference in resulting file sizes is usually small. As a consequence, unless I'm creating an large archive which will have to go across a transmission line multiple times, or will just barely fit on a transport medium (e.g. a CD-ROM), I generally use the 'z' option over 'j'. I'm not familiar with the performance of LZMA compression, so I can't comment about that option. The 'Z' option selects the ancient and obsolete "compress" algorithm. You don't want this one.

A second comment regarding compression. If your archive is primarily composed of already-compressed data, such as JPEG images or MP3 files, there's minimal to no benefit to selecting a compression algorithm. You may get a "compressed" tar file which is actually larger than one generated without a compression option, due to the overhead of the algorithm. If in doubt, create both in "/tmp" and use the smaller of the two.

To expand a little on what colucix said above, a big advantage to tar is that it will leave in place a directory structure essentially identical to the original. All file permissions, ownership and modification dates are retained. Of course, this is also true with zip/unzip and cpio, but among UNIX/Linux people, it's tar that you'll see used most often.

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hello y'all again. would now really like to understand how extraction works -x option. after an archive has been compressed, does the extraction UN-compresses it, or how do you uncompress a compressed archives? thanks again.

tar <option> <file>

tar is the command
-c is to create a archive
-v verbose for what is going on
-f the file name
-x to extract a file
-j filter through bzip to compress or decompress file
-z filter through gunzip to compress or decompress a file
-p preserve permissions

Examples
files.tar
untar it would be

tar xf files.tar

now you have file called files
to retar it or create a archive

tar cf files.tar tar

if you have files.tar.gz to untar would be

tar xzf files.tar.gz

to retar and compress with gunzip file called files would be

tar czf files.tar.gz files

you can also use the v option to see it do its thing as

tar xvf file
tar cvf file.tar file
tar cvzf file.tar.gz file
tar cvjf file.tar.bzip file

and so on

Hope this helps

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Hello all. For you all that take out time to replying my posts and request, can't thanks you enough. Really greatful qnd appreciate all the love. You guys are helping buildio a great network of computer professionals. Thanks a lot and so much love. Cheers.

You can always give people +1 Rep

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Don't you think a honest "thank you" is enough?
I don't like this begging for rep's.

Kind regards

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I was thinking the same thing...

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