How to Use tar to Archive and Compress Files

tar is the standard tool for creating and extracting archives on Linux.

Create an Archive

# Create gzip compressed archive
tar -czf archive.tar.gz /path/to/directory

# Create bzip2 compressed archive
tar -cjf archive.tar.bz2 /path/to/directory

Extract an Archive

# Extract gzip archive
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz

# Extract to specific directory
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz -C /destination/

List Contents

tar -tzf archive.tar.gz

Common Flags

• -c — create
• -x — extract
• -z — gzip compression
• -j — bzip2 compression
• -f — specify filename
• -v — verbose (show files)
• -t — list contents