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tar command in Linux
Posted on May 22nd, 2008 No commentsIn order to archive files and directories into a single file, you use the ‘tar’ command in Linux. Here are a couple of uses of the tar command :
Using the tar command on the directory
./mydata/.Suppose you have a directory
./mydatain your home folder.To tar everything in “
mydata” directory, to create a “.tar” file, execute the following command :$ tar -cvf mydata.tar mydata
Which will create an archive called “
mydata.tar“.Using the tar command to create a “.tar.gz” of ./mydata
$ tar -czf mydata.tar.gz mydata
List the files in the archive
$ tar -tzf mydata.tar.gz
or
$ tar -tf mydata.tar
A way to list specific files
Note, pipe the results to a file and edit.
$ tar -tzf mydata.tar.gz > mout
Then, edit mout to only include the files you want
$ tar -T mout -xzf mydata.tar.gz
The above command will only get the files in mout.
Of course, if you want them all$ tar -xzf mydata.tar.gz
Encrypt your tar files
$ tar -zcvf - mydata|openssl des3 -salt -k secretpassword | dd of=mydata.des3
This will create stuff.des3…don’t forget the password you put in place of “secretpassword”. This can be done interactively as well.
$ dd if=mydata.des3 |openssl des3 -d -k secretpassword|tar zxf -
NOTE: above there is a “-” at the end… this will extract everything.
Create an archive of numerous files residing in multiple locations
You can maintain a list of files that you want to backup into a file and
tarit when you wish.$ tar czvf tarfile.tar.gz -T list_file
where
list_fileis a simple list of names of files and directories you want to include into the archive – one per line. The-Toption indicates the files have to be read from thelist_file.For example, my file contains the following data.
/etc/smb.conf /root/myfile /etc/ppp (all files into the /etc/ppp directory) /opt/gnome/html/gnome-dev-info.html
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