In order to archive files and folders in linux shell using “tar” you can use the following commands:
tar -cvzf example.tgz *
which will add all files from current directory to archive called example.tgz or you can do:
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz /example/for/directory
and this will add the folder /example/for/directory to archive called archive.tar.gz. The meaning of the directives in both cases is:
-c — create a new archive
-f — specifies the filename used to tar into or from
-v — show the progress of the files being archived
-z — compress the tar file with gzip
Now in order to extract data from archive you will need to use an additional directive “x” instead of “c”:
x --- extract (restore) the contents of the tar file.
Here is an example:
tar -xzvf filename.tgz
which will extract files from filename.tgz archive.