General Information

Tar archiving utility.

Checklist

• Distro(s): Any

Options

• -c ⇒ create new archive
• -t ⇒ list contents of archive
• -x ⇒ extract files from archive
• -z ⇒ compress or decompress in gzip (depending upon if -x or -c was also passed)
• -v ⇒ display files as they are processed
• -j ⇒ use bzip2
• -r ⇒ append/add file to the end of the existing archive
• -u ⇒ update a file in an existing archive if the source is newer
• -f ⇒ archive filename
• –selinux ⇒ include selinux contexts

Archive and compress (using gzip) the /var/log directory

tar -cvzf logs.tar.gz /var/log

List contents of archive

tar -tf logs.tar.gz

Decompress and unpack at the same time to current directory

tar -zxvf logs.tar.gz

Decompress and unpack at the same time to a different existing directory

tar -zxvf logs.tar.gz -C /home/rjones/data/

Add a new file to an existing archive

tar -rvf logs.tar newlog.log