Linux Fundamentals - Part 14: Archiving & Compressing Files

Archiving

Archiving means combining multiple files into one single file. It does not reduce file size, it simply packages everything together.

tar - command use to create the archive.

I practiced creating an archive using:

tar -cvf archive.tar proj_dir

What -cvf means:

• c - tells tar to create a new archive.
• v - verbose (show progress).
• f - file name. This creates one file called archive.tar that contains everything inside proj_dir.

Compression

Compression reduces files size to save storage space and make file transfers faster.

gzip - command use to compress file size.

Example:

gzip archive.tar

This command will compress archive.tar and rename it to archive.tar.gz. The original archive.tar file will be replaced by the compressed version.

This created:

archive.tar.gz

Archiving + Compressing Together

What I found really useful is that we can archive and compress at the same time:

tar -czvf archive.tar.gz sample_dir

The new option here is:

z - use gzip compression

This command:

1. Combines the folder
2. Compresses it
3. Creates a .tar.gz file

Now I understand why .tar.gz files are so common in Linux systems.

Extracting Files

To extract a compressed archive:

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

• x = extract
• z = gzip
• v = verbose
• f = file This restores everything from the archive.

Today, I learned that archiving combines multiple files into one using tar without reducing file size, while compression reduces the file size with tools like gzip. I practiced creating an archive with tar -cvf archive.tar proj_dir and compressing it using gzip archive.tar to make archive.tar.gz. I also learned that I can archive and compress at the same time with tar -czvf archive.tar.gz sample_dir. Finally, I practiced extracting files using tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz.