You need to use tar command as follows (syntax of tar command):
tar -zcvf archive-name.tar.gz directory-name
Where,
- -z: Compress archive using gzip program
- -c: Create archive
- -v: Verbose i.e display progress while creating archive
- -f: Archive File name
For example, you have directory called /home/jerry/prog and you would like to compress this directory then you can type tar command as follows: $ tar -zcvf prog-1-jan-2005.tar.gz /home/jerry/prog
Above command will create an archive file called prog-1-jan-2005.tar.gz in current directory. If you wish to restore your archive then you need to use following command (it will extract all files in current directory): $ tar -zxvf prog-1-jan-2005.tar.gz
Where,
- -x: Extract files
If you wish to extract files in particular directory, for example in /tmp then you need to use following command: $ tar -zxvf prog-1-jan-2005.tar.gz -C /tmp
$ cd /tmp
$ ls -