Linux compression tools

Background:
The tar command was developed during the 90’s it was originally designed to backup I/O devices into tapes.
Nowadays it is commonly used for archiving files and folders into single file.
The popular switches you should use on a daily basis while using the tar command are:

Meaning	Switches
Save permissions while compressing or decompressing	P
Create a tarball	c
Extract a tarball	x
shows and lists all files processed (v stands for verbose)	v
Automatically compress or uncompress it (calls the gzip method(	z
Deals with bzip file, for example the linux kernel is compressed in bz2  (see http://www.kernel.org)	j
Specifies the file name	f

Comment: You can use the –C for changing directory.

For example creating a tar with saving privileges and compressing the folder myData:

gil@ubuntu:~/myData$ sudo tar –pcvzf myCompressedFile.tar *

the * is a wildcard for grabbing everything in the myData folder

For example extracting a tar with saving privileges and decompressing the file myCompressedFile.tar:

gil@ubuntu:~/myData$ sudo tar –pxvzf myCompressedFile.tar

gz command (gzip)

A compressing/uncompressing tool which less used nowadays because of the increase usage of the tar command. It uses the famous Lempel-ziv algorithm (I’ll be talking about it in the close future)

Compressing syntax: sudo gzip 

Decompressing syntax: sudo gunzip 

That’s it for today’s lesson, now try it on your Linux distribution! J