How do I compress/zip a whole Linux directory?

Posted under » Linux on 22 Feb 2012

You need to use the tar command as follows (syntax of tar command):

tar -zcvf archive-name.tar.gz directory-name
tar -zcvf /tmp/archive-name.tar.gz directory-name

Above command will create an archive file called "archive-name.tar.gz" in current directory or you can save it on the /tmp/ folder. If you specify a nested directory location, the archive will also have that information. I would prefer to use a relative name and not the full path name.

Where,

• -z : Compress archive using gzip program in Linux or Unix
• -c : Create archive on Linux
• -v : Verbose i.e display progress while creating archive
• -f : Archive File name

If you wish to restore your archive then you need to use the following command. It will extract all files in current directory.

$ tar -zxvf myforntarchive.tar.gz

Note the difference where -x: Extract files from given archive.