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.
