tar command with simples examples

Intro

According to wikipedia, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one archive file, often referred to as a tarball, for distribution or backup purposes.

Extract

• List and search contents of a tar archive:

user@host $ tar -tz -f archive.tar.gz

• Extract to a specific path:

user@host $ tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz -C /a/folder

• Extract one or more files:

user@host $ tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz "./arch/file01" "./arch/file02"

Create

• Create and compress with lzip a tar archive:

root@host:~# apt-get install lzip

user@host $ tar --lzip -cvf archive.tar.lz /a/folder/*

• Create a tar archive:

user@host $ tar -cvf archive.tar /a/folder/*

• Create and compress with gzip a tar archive:

user@host $ tar -czvf archive.tar.gz /a/folder/*

• Create and compress multiple folders to bzip2 archive :

root@host~# tar cpjf backup.tgz /etc /var/log

• tar archive through ssh:

root@host~# tar -jcvf - /my/fodler/ | ssh root@10.0.0.124 "cat > /backup/$(date +%Y.%m.%d)_backup.tgz"

• Full system backup from root (/) directory using tar (example filename: /2025.09.10_backup.tar.gz):

root@host~# tar cvzf /$(date +%Y.%m.%d)_backup.tar.gz \
--exclude=/$(date +%Y.%m.%d)_backup.tar.gz \
--exclude=/dev \
--exclude=/mnt \
--exclude=/proc \
--exclude=/run \
--exclude=/sys \
--exclude=/tmp \
--exclude=/media \
--exclude=/lost+found \
/