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 - test 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
• -r - flag to append the additional files to the archive
• -u - updating a file

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

Compress each directory in current directory into separate zip

$ for i in */; do echo tar -czvf "${i%/}.tar.gz" "$i"; done #test
tar -czvf hosting.tar.gz hosting/
tar -czvf incubator.tar.gz incubator/
tar -czvf secrets.tar.gz secrets/
$ for i in */; do      tar -czvf "${i%/}.tar.gz" "$i"; done #run

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

'Compress each directory in current directory into separate zip

$ for i in */; do echo zip -r "${i%/}.zip" "$i"; done # Test
$ for i in */; do      zip -r "${i%/}.zip" "$i"; done # Run