Linux archives

TAR, GZ, BZIP

Working with archives in linux where tar = tape archive and the most common used options are:

c - create a new tar file

x - extract file

t - list the contents of an archive

z - compress use gzip compress, extention .tar.gz

j - compress use bzip2 compress, extention .tar.bz2

v - verbose displays files to compress or uncompress

f - file specify the new archive name or an archive to extract from

Compress

Create a compressed .tar.gz archive

#archive a directory and everything under (recursively), the dir tree will be preserved eg. /dir/to/be/compressed/ when you extract
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz /dir/to/be/compressed/
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz /path/to/*.conf #archive only files matching *.conf

Create a compressed archive controlling directory tree structure

tar -czvf archive.tar.gz -C directory/level1/ .
# -C change current working directory
# .  archive all files from current working directory, this way when you extract it will extract to to the current working dir

Extract

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

A single file from compressed .tar.gz

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz myscript.txt

A single directory (here conf directory) from compressed .tar.gz

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz conf

Preview files inside archive

tar -tzvf {.tar.gz}
tar -tjvf {.tbz2}

Zip

Install zip and unzip then use interactive method:

Extract using default options, retaining directory structure

unzip file.zip

Compress file or directory

zip name.zip directory/*
zip name.zip file1 file2 file3