Tar

Internal

• Linux

Options

Archival

When tar is executed as root, the file permissions and owner are preserved.

-p

Preserve permissions, default when the root executes the command.

-s

Preserve order (same order). Sort names to extract to match archive.

-z

Compress, produce a tgz.archive.

-C

Source directory.

Archive

Archive maintaining the user IDs and file permissions:

tar -cvspf .../archive.tar *

Note that the name of the archive file to be created must immediately follow -f, without any interceding parameters.

To also gzip:

tar cfv - ./mydir | gzip > mydir.tgz

Exclude a Specific File from Archive

tar cf <file-name.tar> <dir>

Restoration

Restore preserving the user ID and file permissions (if done as root, the behavior is implicit):

tar -xvspf .../archive.tar

Extract a Specified File

tar -xf archive.tar some/specific/file.txt

gunzip < ... | tar xfv - some/specific/file.txt