Linux – Tarballs, Archive and Compress Folders (tar)

Tarballs are Compressed Archive Files of Folders that are useful when moving folders and making sure all contents stay intact.

In the name tarball “tar” stands for the archiving, and “ball” stands for the compression.

  • tar -czvf archiveName.tar.gz originalFolder – This creates a tarball from the folder originalFolder
    • c = create
    • z = compress with gzip
    • v = verbose
    • f = specify filename
  • tar —list -f archiveName.tar.gz – This lists items in a tarball
  • tar -xzvf archiveName.tar.gz – Extracts the contents of a tarball
    • x = extract

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