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Create linux tar gz (Gzip) archive

tar -czvf myarchive.tgz mydirectory/

We use the -t option to create an linux tar archive
-c, –create create a new archive

Note that .tgz is the same thing as .tar.gz

Create linux simple tar archive (withouth compresion)

tar -cvf myarchive.tar mydirectory/

Extracting linux tar archive:

Extract linux tar gz (Gzip) archive
tar -xzvf mystuff.tgz

Extract linux simple tar archive
tar -xvf mystuff.tar

We use -x to extract the files form the tar archive
-x, –extract, –get extract files from an archive

Extract linux tar archive to speciefied directory
tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz -C /desired/path

And now let us shortly explain this command

Usage: tar [OPTION]… [FILE]…

Let us check the option used in this example

-c, –create                      create a new archive
-z, –gzip, –ungzip        filter the archive through gzip
-v, –verbose                   verbosely list files processed
-f, –file=ARCHIVE          use archive file or device ARCHIVE

-C directory file
Performs a chdir  operation on directory and performs the c (create) or r (replace) operation on file .
In c and r mode, this changes the directory before adding the following files. In x mode, change directories after opening the archive but before extracting entries from the archive.

Testing / viewing your archive

tar -tvf myarchive.tar
tar -tzvf myarchive.tgz

Here we used the – t opton
-t, –list                           list the contents of an archive

Backing Data

Tar can be used to backup an entire directory keeping all permissions and users accounts intact. The trick is to use sudo to keep the permissions intact.

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