10 quick tar command examples to create/extract...

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10 quick tar command examples to create/extract archives in Linux

Linux Commands

By Silver Moon

On Feb 23, 2015

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Tar command on Linux

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The tar (tape archive) command is a frequently used command on linux that allows you to store les into
an archive.
The commonly seen le extensions are .tar.gz and .tar.bz2
which is a tar archive further compressed using gzip or
bzip algorithms respectively.
In this tutorial we shall take a look at simple examples of
using the tar command to do daily jobs of creating and
extracting archives on linux desktops or servers.

Using the tar command

The tar command is available by default on most linux systems and you do not need to install it
separately.

With tar there are 2 compression formats, gzip and bzip. The "z" option species gzip and "j" option
species bzip. It is also possible to create uncompressed archives.

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1. Extract a tar.gz archive

Well, the more common use is to extract tar archives. The following command shall extract the les out a
tar.gz archive
$ tar -xvzf tarfile.tar.gz

Here is a quick explanation of the parameters used -

x - Extract les
v - verbose, print the le names as they are extracted one by one
z - The le is a "gzipped" le
f - Use the following tar archive for the operation

Those are some of the important options to memorise

Extract tar.bz2/bzip archives
Files with extension bz2 are compressed with the bzip algorithm and tar command can deal with them as
well. Use the j option instead of the z option.
$ tar -xvjf archivefile.tar.bz2

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2. Extract les to a specic directory or path

To extract out the les to a specic directory, specify the path using the "-C" option. Note that its a capital
C.

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$ tar -xvzf abc.tar.gz -C /opt/folder/

However rst make sure that the destination directory exists, since tar is not going to create the directory
for you and will fail if it does not exist.

3. Extract a single le
To extract a single le out of an archive just add the le name after the command like this
$ tar -xz -f abc.tar.gz "./new/abc.txt"

More than once le can be specied in the above command like this
$ tar -xv -f abc.tar.gz "./new/cde.txt" "./new/abc.txt"

4. Extract multiple les using wildcards

Wildcards can be used to extract out a bunch of les matching the given wildcards. For example all les
with ".txt" extension.
$ tar -xv -f abc.tar.gz --wildcards "*.txt"

5. List and search contents of the tar archive

If you want to just list out the contents of the tar archive and not extract them, use the "-t" option. The
following command prints the contents of a gzipped tar archive,
$ tar -tz -f abc.tar.gz
./new/
./new/cde.txt
./new/subdir/
./new/subdir/in.txt
./new/abc.txt
...

Pipe the output to grep to search a le or less command to browse the list. Using the "v" verbose option
shall print additional details about each le.
For tar.bz2/bzip les use the "j" option
Use the above command in combination with the grep command to search the archive. Simple!
$ tar -tvz -f abc.tar.gz | grep abc.txt
-rw-rw-r-- enlightened/enlightened 0 2015-01-13 11:40 ./new/abc.txt

6. Create a tar/tar.gz archive

Now that we have learnt how to extract existing tar archives, its time to start creating new ones. The tar
command can be told to put selected les in an archive or an entire directory. Here are some examples.
The following command creates a tar archive using a directory, adding all les in it and sub directories as
well.
$ tar -cvf abc.tar ./new/
./new/
./new/cde.txt
./new/abc.txt

The above example does not create a compressed archive. Just a plain archive, that puts multiple les
together without any real compression.
In order to compress, use the "z" or "j" option for gzip or bzip respectively.
$ tar -cvzf abc.tar.gz ./new/

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The extension of the le name does not really matter. "tar.gz" and tgz are common extensions for
les compressed with gzip. ".tar.bz2" and ".tbz" are commonly used extensions for bzip compressed
les.

7. Ask conrmation before adding les

A useful option is "w" which makes tar ask for conrmation for every le before adding it to the archive.
This can be sometimes useful.
Only those les would be added which are given a yes answer. If you do not enter anything, the default
answer would be a "No".
# Add specific files
$ tar -czw -f abc.tar.gz ./new/*
add ./new/abc.txt?y
add ./new/cde.txt?y
add ./new/newfile.txt?n
add ./new/subdir?y
add ./new/subdir/in.txt?n
# Now list the files added
$ tar -t -f abc.tar.gz
./new/abc.txt
./new/cde.txt
./new/subdir/

8. Add les to existing archives

The r option can be used to add les to existing archives, without having to create new ones. Here is a
quick example
$ tar -rv -f abc.tar abc.txt

Files cannot be added to compressed archives (gz or bzip). Files can only be added to plain tar
archives.

9. Add les to compressed archives (tar.gz/tar.bz2)

Its already mentioned that its not possible to add les to compressed archives. However it can still be
done with a simple trick. Use the gunzip command to uncompress the archive, add le to archive and
compress it again.
$ gunzip archive.tar.gz
$ tar -rf archive.tar ./path/to/file
$ gzip archive.tar

For bzip les use the bzip2 and bunzip2 commands respectively.

10. Backup with tar

A real scenario is to backup directories at regular intervals. The tar command can be scheduled to take
such backups via cron. Here is an example $ tar -cvz -f archive-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz ./new/

Run the above command via cron and it would keep creating backup les with names like 'archive-20150218.tar.gz'.
Ofcourse make sure that the disk space is not overown with larger and larger archives.

11. Verify archive les while creation

The "W" option can be used to verify the les after creating archives. Here is a quick example.
$ tar -cvW -f abc.tar ./new/
./new/
./new/cde.txt
./new/subdir/

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./new/subdir/in.txt
./new/newfile.txt
./new/abc.txt
Verify ./new/
Verify ./new/cde.txt
Verify ./new/subdir/
Verify ./new/subdir/in.txt
Verify ./new/newfile.txt
Verify ./new/abc.txt

Note that the verication cannot be done on compressed archives. It works only with uncompressed tar
archives.
Thats all for now. For more check out the man page for tar command, with "man tar".
Last Updated On : 23rd February 2015

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About Silver Moon

Php developer, blogger and Linux enthusiast. He can be reached at admin@binarytides.com. Or nd
him on Google+

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