Tar (computing)

tar is a program for creating archives.
tar archives, or tarballs, preserve unix permissions of multiple files or folders.
By default, a .tar file is not compressed. Typically you'll see .tar.gz, or .tgz which denotes a tar file compressed using gzip.

Getting Started

Extraction

tar xzvf archive.tar.gz

Archive

tar czpvf archive.tar.gz files

Flags

• -x extract preserving paths
• -p preserve permissions
• -c create an archive
• -f specify file
• -C output dir

Compression formats

• -z use gzip
• -j use bzip2
• -J use xz
• -I pigz use pigz (parallel gz)

Progress Bar

Reference

Tar does not give you a progress bar by default. You can get a progress bar by piping tar through pv:

tar cf - $folder | pv -s $(du -sb $folder | awk '{print $1}') | pigz > $folder.tar.gz