Tar

Title: Archive and Extract Files using Tar

Author: Umair Anwar

Subject: Linux

Language: English

Source: PHP I Did, Blogspot

Tar (short for "tape archive") is a command-line utility in Linux and Unix-like operating systems used to archive and compress files and directories. It's a versatile tool that's essential for many administrative tasks, backups, and software distribution. In this post, I will cover the most common tar commands and demonstrate how to extract a .tar file in an Ubuntu or Linux terminal.

Tar Commands

1. Creating a Tar Archive: To create a new tar archive, you can use the tar command followed by the -cf (create file) option and specify the archive file name and the list of files or directories you want to archive.

tar -cf archive.tar file1 file2 directory/

For example, to create an archive of all files and directories in the "myfolder" directory, you can use:

tar -cf myarchive.tar myfolder/

2. Creating a Compressed Tar Archive: You can also create a compressed tar archive by combining tar with compression utilities like gzip or bzip2. The -z option is used with tar to create a gzip-compressed archive, and the -j option is used to create a bzip2-compressed archive. For gzip compression:

tar -czf archive.tar.gz file1 file2 directory/

For bzip2 compression:

tar -cjf archive.tar.bz2 file1 file2 directory/

3. Listing Contents of a Tar Archive: To list the contents of a tar archive, you can use the -tf option:

tar -tf archive.tar

This command will display the files and directories included in the archive.

4. Extracting Files from a Tar Archive: To extract files from a tar archive, use the -x option, followed by the -f option specifying the archive file:

tar -xf archive.tars

This will extract the contents of the archive into the current directory.

5. Extracting Files with Verbosity: You can use the -v option to enable verbose mode when extracting files. This will display a list of files as they are extracted:

tar -xvf archive.tar

6. Extracting a Specific File from a Tar Archive: If you want to extract a specific file from the archive, you can specify the file's path within the archive:

tar -xf archive.tar path/to/file.txt

7. Extracting to a Different Directory: By default, tar extracts files to the current directory. To extract them to a different directory, use the -C option:

tar -xf archive.tar -C /path/to/destination/

8. Extracting and Preserving Permissions: To preserve file permissions while extracting, use the --preserve-permissions or -p option:

tar -xpf archive.tar

9. Extracting a Compressed Tar Archive: When extracting from a compressed archive, you can use the same extraction commands as shown earlier. The -z and -j options for gzip and bzip2 archives are not required when extracting; tar will automatically detect the compression method used.

Tar is a powerful tool for managing files and directories in Linux, and these commands should cover most of your archiving and extraction needs.