tar#

Tar files are just a collection of files and/or folders, compression is optional.

Command Line Options#

Create a tar file of the /home/username folder#

tar -cvf user-backup-17-11-2023.tar /home/username

• c - Creates a new archive
• v - Enables verbose output
• f - Allow the user to specify the output tar filename

Extract a tar file#

tar xvf user-backup.tar

• x - Extracts the contents of the tar file

Extract a tar file to a specific folder#

tar xvf user-backup.tar --directory=myFolder

Compressing when creating a tar#

• -j --bzip2 - Use bzip compression
• -z --gzip - Use gzip compression
• -J --xz - Use xz compression
• -J --zstd - Use zstd compression

Extract a specfic file or files from an archive#

tar -xvf Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 full/path/of/file/in/archive.txt
tar -xvf Phpfiles-org.tar.bz2 file1 file2