how to untar/tar
NOTE: See also this Backing up Files with Tar
by Dru Lavigne. It covers much more detail than this article does.
tar is used to create a Tape ARchive. The resulting file is known as a
tarball. It’s pretty much the same concept as a ZIP file, if you know what they are,
but without the compression. To get the files out of a tarball, you can use the
following commands:
tar xvf something.tar
If the tarball has also been gzipped (compressed), you can use the following command:
tar xvfz something.tar.gz
If you only want certain directories from the tarball, do this:
tar xvzf something.tar.gz */dir.you.want/*
If you have a .tar.bz2 file, then you need bzip2 installed
(/usr/ports/archivers/bzip2), and you issue this command:
tar yxf something.tar.bz2
tar
To tar up *.db in the current directory into a tarball called blah.tar.gz, issue this
command:
tar cfz blah.tar.gz *.db
The z option compresses.
listing the contents
To see a list of the files within a tarball, issue the following command:
tar -tzf blah.tar.gz
The -t provides a list. the -z indicates that the tarball is compressed.
The -f identifies the tarball.
Here’s an example:
# tar -tzf makeworld.991126.tgz etc/ etc/protocols etc/aliases etc/services etc/hosts