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author Patrick J Volkerding <volkerdi@slackware.com>2009-08-26 10:00:38 -0500
committer Eric Hameleers <alien@slackware.com>2018-05-31 22:41:17 +0200
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Slackware 13.0slackware-13.0
Wed Aug 26 10:00:38 CDT 2009 Slackware 13.0 x86_64 is released as stable! Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible -- see the RELEASE_NOTES for the credits. The ISOs are off to the replicator. This time it will be a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a dual-sided 32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD. We're taking pre-orders now at store.slackware.com. Please consider picking up a copy to help support the project. Once again, thanks to the entire Slackware community for all the help testing and fixing things and offering suggestions during this development cycle. As always, have fun and enjoy! -P.
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
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+<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
+<title>tar</title>
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+<link rel="HOME" title="Slackware Linux Essentials" href="index.html" />
+<link rel="UP" title="Archive Files" href="archive-files.html" />
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+<table summary="Header navigation table" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0"
+cellspacing="0">
+<tr>
+<th colspan="3" align="center">Slackware Linux Essentials</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td width="10%" align="left" valign="bottom"><a href="archive-files-bzip2.html"
+accesskey="P">Prev</a></td>
+<td width="80%" align="center" valign="bottom">Chapter 15 Archive Files</td>
+<td width="10%" align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="archive-files-zip.html"
+accesskey="N">Next</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr align="LEFT" width="100%" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="SECT1">
+<h1 class="SECT1"><a id="ARCHIVE-FILES-TAR" name="ARCHIVE-FILES-TAR">15.3 <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt></a></h1>
+
+<p><tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt>(1) is the GNU tape archiver. It takes several files or
+directories and creates one large file. This allows you to compress an entire directory
+tree, which is impossible by just using <tt class="COMMAND">gzip</tt> or <tt
+class="COMMAND">bzip2</tt>. <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> has many command line options,
+which are explained in its man page. This section will just cover the most common uses of
+<tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt>.</p>
+
+<p>The most common use for <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> is to decompress and unarchive a
+package that you've downloaded from a web site or ftp site. Most files will come with a
+<tt class="FILENAME">.tar.gz</tt> extension. This is commonly known as a
+&#8220;tarball&#8221;. It means that several files were archived using <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt> and then compressed using <tt class="COMMAND">gzip</tt>. You
+might also see this listed as a <tt class="FILENAME">.tar.Z</tt> file. It means the same
+thing, but this is usually encountered on older Unix systems.</p>
+
+<p>Alternatively, you might find a <tt class="FILENAME">.tar.bz2</tt> file somewhere.
+Kernel source is distributed as such because it is a smaller download. As you might have
+guessed, this is several files archived with <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> and then
+bzipped.</p>
+
+<p>You can get to all the files in this archive by making use of <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt> and some command line arguments. Unarchiving a tarball makes use
+of the <var class="OPTION">-z</var> flag, which means to first run the file through <tt
+class="COMMAND">gunzip</tt> and decompress it. The most common way to decompress a
+tarball is like so:</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>That's quite a few options. So what do they all mean? The <var class="OPTION">-x</var>
+means to extract. This is important, as it tells <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> exactly
+what to do with the input file. In this case, we'll be splitting it back up into all the
+files that it came from. <var class="OPTION">-v</var> means to be verbose. This will list
+all the files that are being unarchived. It is perfectly acceptable to leave this option
+off, if somewhat boring. Alternatively, you could use <var class="OPTION">-vv</var> to be
+very verbose and list even more information about each file being unarchived. The <var
+class="OPTION">-z</var> option tells <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> to run <tt
+class="FILENAME">filename.tar.gz</tt> through <tt class="COMMAND">gunzip</tt> first. And
+finally, the <var class="OPTION">-f</var> option tells <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> that
+the next string on the command line is the file to operate on.</p>
+
+<p>There are a few other ways to write this same command. On older systems lacking a
+decent copy of GNU <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt>, you might see it written like so:</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd
+class="USERINPUT">gunzip filename.tar.gz | tar -xvf -</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This command line will uncompress the file and send the output to <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt>. Since <tt class="COMMAND">gzip</tt> will write its output to
+standard out if told to do so, this command will write the decompressed file to standard
+out. The pipe then sends it to <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> for unarchiving. The
+&#8220;-&#8221; means to operate on standard input. It will unarchive the stream of data
+that it gets from <tt class="COMMAND">gzip</tt> and write that to the disk.</p>
+
+<p>Another way to write the first command line is to leave off the dash before the
+options, like so:</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">tar xvzf filename.tar.gz</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>You might also encounter a bzipped archive. The version of <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt> that comes with Slackware Linux can handle these the same as
+gzipped archives. Instead of the <var class="OPTION">-z</var> command line option, you'd
+use <var class="OPTION">-j</var>:</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">tar -xvjf filename.tar.bz2</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>It is important to note that <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> will place the unarchived
+files in the current directory. So, if you had an archive in <tt
+class="FILENAME">/tmp</tt> that you wanted to decompress into your home directory, there
+are a few options. First, the archive could be moved into your home directory and then
+run through <tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt>. Second, you could specify the path to the
+archive file on the command line. Third, you can use the <var class="OPTION">-C</var>
+option to &#8220;explode&#8221; the tarball in a specified directory.</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">cd $HOME</kbd>
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">cp /tmp/filename.tar.gz .</kbd>
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz</kbd>
+
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">cd $HOME</kbd>
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">tar -xvzf /tmp/filename.tar.gz</kbd>
+
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">cd /</kbd>
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd
+class="USERINPUT">tar -xvzf /tmp/filename.tar.gz -C $HOME</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>All the above statements are equivalent. In each case, the archive is unpacked inside
+your home directory and the original uncompressed archive is left in place.</p>
+
+<p>So what good is being able to uncompress these archives if you can't make them? Well,
+<tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt> handles that too. In most cases it's as easy as removing the
+&#8220;<var class="OPTION">-x</var>&#8221; option and replacing it with the &#8220;<var
+class="OPTION">-c</var>&#8221; option.</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">tar -cvzf filename.tar.gz .</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>In this command line, the <var class="OPTION">-c</var> option tells <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt> to create an archive, while the <var class="OPTION">-z</var>
+option runs the resulting archive file through <tt class="COMMAND">gzip</tt> to compress
+it. <tt class="FILENAME">filename.tar.gz</tt> is the file that you want to create.</p>
+
+<p>Specifying the &#8220;<var class="OPTION">-f</var>&#8221; option isn't always
+necessary, but is typically good practice anyway. Without it, <tt
+class="COMMAND">tar</tt> writes to standard output, which is usually desired for piping
+<tt class="COMMAND">tar</tt>'s output to another program, like so.</p>
+
+<table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0" width="100%">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<pre class="SCREEN">
+<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd
+class="USERINPUT">tar -cv filename.tar . | gpg --encrypt</kbd>
+</pre>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>That command creates an non-compressed tar archive of the current directory, pipes the
+tarball through <tt class="COMMAND">gpg</tt> which encrypts and compresses the tarball,
+making it realistically impossible to read by anyone other than the person knowing the
+secret key.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="NAVFOOTER">
+<hr align="LEFT" width="100%" />
+<table summary="Footer navigation table" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0"
+cellspacing="0">
+<tr>
+<td width="33%" align="left" valign="top"><a href="archive-files-bzip2.html"
+accesskey="P">Prev</a></td>
+<td width="34%" align="center" valign="top"><a href="index.html"
+accesskey="H">Home</a></td>
+<td width="33%" align="right" valign="top"><a href="archive-files-zip.html"
+accesskey="N">Next</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td width="33%" align="left" valign="top"><tt class="COMMAND">bzip2</tt></td>
+<td width="34%" align="center" valign="top"><a href="archive-files.html"
+accesskey="U">Up</a></td>
+<td width="33%" align="right" valign="top"><tt class="COMMAND">zip</tt></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+