On the command line
- To pack tar files, use the following commands:
- for an uncompressed tar file:
tar -cf packed_files.tar file_to_pack1 file_to_pack2 ...
- to pack and compress (one step at a time):
tar -cf packed_files.tar file_to_pack1 file_to_pack2 ...
gzip packed_files.tar
- to pack and compress all at once:
tar -cf - file_to_pack1 file_to_pack2 ... | gzip -c > packed_files.tar.gz
- to create a tar from a directory and its subdirectories:
tar -cvf packed_files.tar dir_to_pack
- for an uncompressed tar file:
- To unpack tar files, use the following commands:
- for an uncompressed tar file:
-
tar -xvf file_to_unpack.tar
- to decompress and unpack one step at a time:
gunzip packed_files.tar.gz
tar -xf packed_files.tar
- to decompress and unpack all at once:
gunzip -c packed_files.tar.gz | tar -xf -
- To list the contents of a tar file, use the following command:
-
tar -tvf file_to_list.tar
-
To use bzip2 instead of gzip, simply replace the commands above with bzip2 where gzip is used and bunzip2 where gunzip is used.