tar

To extract a tar file, run

tar xf file.tar.gz

Uncompress tar.gz file

tar -zxvf ncftp-3.2.2-src.tar.gz

Uncompress tar.bz2 file

tar -jxvf ncftp-3.2.2-src.tar.bz2

Create a tar file

tar -cvf file.tar FOLDER_OR_FILE_NAME

Example

tar -cvf backup.tar public_html

Once backup.tar file is created, you can make it tar.gz with command

gzip backup.tar

Exclude a folder from tar file

To exclude a folder, you can use –exclude option.

tar cvf backup.tar --exclude=public_html/uploads --exclude=public_html/wordpress public_html

List content of a tar file

tar --list --verbose --file=BACKUP.tar.gz

If you want to exclude a folder from the file list, use

tar --list --verbose --file=BACKUP.tar.gz --exclude=home/haridy/Maildir

This will exclude all files that are inside folder “home/haridy/Maildir”. You can use multiple –exclude if required.

Using tar over SSH Session
Split Large file into smaller files
How to view the contents of tar.gz file