Using the TAR command to archive, compress, and unpack files on Linux

TAR is short for Tape Archive and is a good tool for archiving and compressing files for backup use. Also, software that is downloaded from the internet can come compressed and you can use the tar command on the terminal to unpack these compressed files. In this tutorial, we will go over some basic TAR commands that will come in handy.

First, let's open up a terminal by clicking on the bottom left.  Then up top in the search bar, type terminal, and click on the terminal icon to open.

Archiving files and folders using TAR

Basic Syntax for TAR is shown below.  To archive more than one file you just need to add a space

tar [options] [archive file name] [files to archive]

In the example below, we will be using sudo to bypass permission issues.

sudo tar cvf my_backup.tar file1 file2 file3

• c – short for create (create archive)
• v – short for verbose (show verbose output)
• f – short for filename (name of the archived file)

To verify that the files were archived, we will use the t option to list folders in the .tar file we created.

sudo tar -tf my_backup.tar

We can also back up directories. In this example, I will back up my /Documents folder

sudo tar cvf backup_docs.tar home/user/Documents

Compressing files and folders using tar along with gzip

The tar file is not a compressed file. We will need to use gzip to compress our .tar backup using the z option

sudo tar cvzf my_docs.tgz home/user/Documents

Above you can see the my_doc.tgz file that was created and the verbose output that has been compressed successfully.

Unpacking a compressed file using tar

To extract or unpack a file you can use the x option. In these examples, we will extract a file contained in the .tar archive.  The x options are also used to unpack gzip files.

sudo tar xvf my_backup.tar file1

To unpack a .tar or .tgz file and move it to a new directory we will use the -C option.  First, let's make a directory

sudo mkdir /home/user/backupShells

Next, let's unpack and move our my_docs_new.tgz file to that directory.

sudo tar xvf my_docs_new.tgz -C home/sguzman/backupShells

And that’s how you create archives, compressed files, and unpack them.