Using tar and gzip

Sometimes, we want to pack a full directory, including files, into a single file for backup purposes or simply to share it more easily. The command that can help aggregate files into one is tar.

First, we need to install tar:

[root@rhel8 ~]# yum install tar -y

We can try by creating, as root, a backup of the /etc directory branch:

[root@rhel8 ~]# tar -cf etc-backup.tar /etc
tar: Removing leading '/' from member names
[root@rhel8 ~]# ls -lh etc-backup.tar 
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 21M dic 27 16:08 etc-backup.tar

Let's check the options used:

• -c: Short for create. TAR can put files together but also unpack them.
• -f: Short for file. We specify that the next parameter will be working with a file.

We can try to unpack it:

[root@rhel8 ~]# mkdir tmp
[root@rhel8 ~]# cd tmp/
[root@rhel8 tmp]# tar -xf ../etc-backup.tar 
[root@rhel8 tmp]# ls
etc

Let's check the new option used:

• -x: for extraction. It unpacks...