Tar

Tar is a command that can be used to make a lot of files or a folder of files into one file. This is useful for distributing sets of files!

A file that ends in .tar is a tarball. Tarballs can also be compressed and end in: .tar.gz/.tgz (gzip) or .tar.bz2/.tbz2/.tb2 (bzip).

[edit] 1 Unpacking a tarball

For .tar.gz/.tgz:

tar -xzf FILENAME

For .tar.bz2/.tbz2/.tb2:

tar -xjf FILENAME

If you want to have the command line list all of the filenames as it unpacks them, you can use the verbose option:

tar -xvzf FILENAME
tar -xvjf FILENAME

You can also make tarballs out of a folder:

tar -czf TARBALLNAME.tar.gz FOLDERNAME

If you want a list of all of the filenames as they are packed, use the verbose option:

tar -cvzf TARBALLNAME.tar.gz FOLDERNAME