Week 19: Day 051 - TAR + GZip Compression

Hello folks, and welcome to my short blog on TAR. Basically, what I was asked to do, was to create a blog entry which built on something from the chapters we have been reading. I was given the task of going in-depth on TAR.

To begin, "Tape Archiver" (TAR) is used to archive files. There are three tasks important to the RHCSA exam, when it comes to knowing how to archive. You should know how to:

- Create an archive
- List the contents of an archive
- Extract an archive

To create an archive using TAR, you want to use the command:

tar cf(v if you want to see what's happening) archivename.tar /files-you-want-to-archive

Example: (must be root) tar cvf /root/homes.tar /home

To add a file to an archive you would use the r modifier.

Example: tar rvf /root/homes.tar /etc/hosts

To update it, use the u modifier.

To extract the archive, use the x modifier.

To see the contents of an archive type use the t modifier.

Now, you're probably all wonder, "when do we get to the compression". Well interestingly enough, back then this wasn't really used for compression. There was an add-on to the program called gzip, and it got so popular, that now it's implemented in TAR by default. Nowadays, compression is all it's used for. Here's how to do it:

When you're creating your archive, add the modifier -z and it will compress it when archiving your files. However, if you have already archived your files and you want to compress it, a command like this would work:

gzip (name of file).tar

That's all there is to it! Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped.