Archive and Backup

Updated Mar 21, 2021 ·

Archiving and backing up files in Linux is essential for data protection and management. Various tools and commands can help you achieve this, including tar, gzip, bzip2, and xz.

`tar` - Tape Archiver

The tar command is used to create archive files and extract them. It can also compress the archives using gzip.

Commands:

To "compress" the files and print out a verbose output:
```
tar -cvf <file.tar> <file-or-dir>
```
where:
- c: Create a new archive.
- v: Verbose, list files processed.
- f: File name of the archive.
To compress and zip the files/directories in one command:
```
tar czvf <file.tar.gz> <files-or-dir>
```
- z: Compress the archive using gzip.
To compress and zip the files/directories, excluding specific files:
```
tar cvzf bkup.tar.gz --exclude=file1 <files-or-dir>
```
To compress the tar archive using gzip:
```
gzip <file.tar>
```
To extract the contents of a compressed tar file:
```
tar xzvf <file.tar.gz>
```
To extract the contents into a specific directory:
```
tar xvf <file.tar.gz> -C /tmp/dir2
```
To list the contents of a tar file without extracting:
```
tar --list -f bkup.tar
```
For a detailed list including permissions and owners:
```
tar tvf bkup.tar
```

`gzip`, `bzip2`, `xz`

These commands are used to compress and decompress files. gzip is the most common compression utility.

`gzip`

To zip a file, note that it replaces the original file with the zipped version:
```
gzip <file>
```
To keep the original file, add the -k flag:
```
gzip -k <file>
```
To unzip a file:
```
gunzip <file.gz>
```

`bzip2`

To compress a file using bzip2:
```
bzip2 <file>
```

`xz`

To compress a file using xz:
```
xz -k <file>
```
To view detailed help for bzip2:
```
bzip2 --help
```
To compress a file using bzip2:
```
bzip2 sample.tar
```
To compress a file using xz and keep the original file:
```
xz -k sample.tar
```

tar - Tape Archiver​

gzip, bzip2, xz​

gzip​

bzip2​

xz​

`tar` - Tape Archiver

`gzip`, `bzip2`, `xz`

`gzip`

`bzip2`

`xz`