Lemme explain. I wanna back up webroot located at /var/www/html/webroot by creating a file called webroot.tar.gz but I wanna place it in /var/www/html/archive, in the archive itself I only want to see the webroot directory, and it's files contained with in. I do not want to open the archive and see var, then www, then html, then webroot. I have a feeling I need to be using the -C option but I can't for the life of me figure out how.

Any tips? I am hoping to do this in a single command.

Update: I figured it out! Thanks for reading anyhow.

-C changes the start directory.
You can achieve the same with

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you must not put the tar created into the source directory tree (conflict between -C <dir> and -f <file>). Or at least do it in two steps: first create that tar somewhere outside and finally move it to the final location. (post #2 is ok, because webroot is packed into archive).

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Good point in principle,
but here the webroot aka /var/www/html/webroot is outside.

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I should have mentioned this needs to fire from exec() in php land. I wasn't sure if or how I could toss multiple commands into a single function call, and if I were to do it in two, I wasn't sure how the system would be aware or keep track of the fact that I am now in a different directory.

Thanks for the explanations all!