Notice that we shaved a little space off the tar file while deleting the ShenTix.pdf file. For example, if we wanted to remove tile file that we extracted above from the file, we would do it like this: $ gunzip You can even delete files from a tarball if the tarball is not compressed. To extract an individual file from a gzipped tarball, you do almost the same thing but add the file name: $ tar -xvzf ShenTix.pdf tgz naming convention, that command would look like this: $ tar -xvzf MyPDFs.tgz To extract all of the files from a gzipped tarball, you would use a command like this: $ tar -xvzf tar.gz as shown in this command: $ tar cvzf MyPDFs.tgz *.pdf Omit the v if you don't want to see the files listed.Īnother common naming convention is to give zipped tarballs the extension. The c specifies that you are creating the file and the v (verbose) indicates that you want some feedback while the command is running. Note that it’s the z in that list of options that causes the file to be compressed or “zipped”. A slightly simpler command would just put all of the PDF files into an uncompressed tarball: $ tar -cvf PDFs.tar *.pdf

The result in this case is a compressed (gzipped) file that contains all of the PDF files that are in the current directory. You can create a tarball and compress it in a single step if you use a command like this one: $ tar -cvzf *.pdf Extracting the files from a tarball that’s sitting in place will generally be faster than having to retrieve the files from backups.

Linux sysadmins, for example, will often create a tarball containing a series of configuration files before making changes to an application just in case they have to reverse those changes. Tarballs are often used to back up personal or system files in place to create an archive, especially prior to making changes that might have to be reversed. tar file extension and the tar command that is used to group together the files into a single file that is then sometimes compressed to make it smaller for its move to another system. The word “tarball” is often used to describe the type of file used to back up a select group of files and join them into a single file.

Create tar file linux