How to Tar a File in Linux

Tar is a useful utility that allows you to archive one of more files in Linux. You can also use it to compress one or more files, or directories into a tar.gz file. It is commonly used for data archival and backup in organizations. In this article, we will look at how to tar a file in Linux. We will cover different use cases for tar utility that might be helpful to you.

How to Tar a File in Linux

Let us look at the different scenarios to tar a file in Linux. Here is the syntax of tar command

$ tar [options] tar_file_name files/directories to be compressed

In the above line, tar command needs to be followed by one or more options, the file name of archive that needs to be created and a space separated list of files & directories that you want to archive/compress.

Open terminal and run the following command to tar a file in linux

$ tar -zcvf file.tar.gz /path/to/file

Let us look at the options in detail

• c – create an archive
• v – verbose meaning show progress
• f – filename is specified to be used
• z – archive using gzip

For example, here is the tar command to compress a single file /home/ubuntu/test.txt

$ tar -zcvf test.tar.gz /home/ubuntu/test.txt

Please note: If you run the tar command without specifying the tar filename you will get the error message “cowardly refusing to create an empty archive”. This is a common mistake many people do and the error message is confusing so it becomes difficult to fix it.

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How to Tar multiple files

You can tar multiple files by simply listing their paths one after the other as shown below

$ sudo tar -zcvf test.tar.gz /home/ubuntu/test1.txt /etc/test2.txt /var/lib/test.txt

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How to tar a directory

Here is the command to tar an entire directory or folder

$ sudo tar -zcvf test.tar.gz /home/ubuntu/files

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How to tar multiple directories

You can tar multiple directories by listing their paths one after the other in a space-separated format.

$ sudo tar -zcvf test.tar.gz /home/ubuntu/files1 /etc/files2 /var/lib/files3

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How to use bzip compression instead of gzip

By default, tar command uses gzip compression to archive data. If you want to use bzip compression instead, just use -j option instead of -z and change the file extension of tar file as .tar.bz2

$ sudo tar -cvjf test.tar.bz2 /home/ubuntu/test.txt

How to view contents of tar file

Here is the command to list the contents of your tar.gz file, using -t option

$ sudo tar -ztvf test.tar.gz
$ sudo tar -jtvf test.tar.bz2

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How to Extract a tar file

Here is the command to extract a tar file

$ sudo tar -xzvf test.tar.gz
$ sudo tar -xjvf test.tar.bz2

As you can see, it is very easy to use tar command and it is widely used for data compression and archival.