by Long Manh Tran
I frequently find myself checking the options available when using the tar function to move areas of our web sites between and internally around servers. Here’s a quick reference guide for using this function.
tar is used to create a Tape Archive and is similar to zip functions minus the compression. The resulting file combines all selected files/directories into a single file known as a tarball.
Create
To tar up the contents of directory ‘mydir’ use the commands:
tar -cvf mydir.tar mydir/
To tar up and compress the contents of directory ‘mydir’ use the commands:
tar -cfz mydir.tar.gz mydir/
Extract
To extract the files out of a tarball ‘mydir’ use the following command
tar -xvf mydir.tar
To extract the files from a compressed (gzipped) tarball ‘mydir’ use the following command
tar -xvfz mydir.tar.gz
View
To view the contents of a tarball ‘mydir’:
tar -tvf mydir.tar
To view the contents of a compressed tarball ‘mydir’:
tar -tzf mydir.tar.gz