

Let’s create an archive of the contents of a directory called importantstuff that’s filled with, well, really important stuff: $ tar czvf - importantstuff/ | ssh "cat > password: Rather than trying to explain all that right away, I’ll use smaller examples to explore it one piece at a time. Here’s the command: # tar czvf -one-file-system / /usr /var \
CARLA CRAWFORD HOW TO
I’m going to show you how to create an archive image of a working Linux installation and stream it to a remote storage location - all within a single command. On the other side, you re-create the archive by reading each of the parts in sequence (cat .part*), then redirect the output to a new file called : $ cat .part* >


The operation then names each of the parts-.partaa, .partab, .partac, and so on: $ split -b 1G ".part" In this example, -b tells Linux to split the file into 1 GB-sized parts.
CARLA CRAWFORD MP4
mp4 files in the /home/myuser/Videos/ directory: $ tar czvf /home/myuser/Videos/*.mp4īecause archive files can get big, it might sometimes make sense to break them down into multiple smaller files, transfer them to their new home, and then re-create the original file at the other end. mp4 file format is itself compressed, so there’s a lot less room for gzip to do its stuff.Īs tar is fully aware of its Linux environment, you can use it to select files and directories that live outside your current working directory. tar.gz file isn’t all that much smaller than the. mp4 files and then run ls -l on the directory containing the new archives, you may notice that the. Here’s how that would play out: $ tar czvf *.mp4 If you want to follow convention, you can also add a. That will tell the gzip program to compress the archive. Say no more! Just run the previous command with the z (zip) argument. Wouldn’t it be nice to make that archive a bit smaller using compression? Here’s how to do that: $ tar cvf archivename.tar *.mp4 The only files you need to back up are the final video clips using the. Suppose you’ve produced some videos, but they're currently kept in directories along with all kinds of graphic, audio, and text files (containing your notes). You won’t always want to include all the files within a directory tree in your archive. Of course, you can also have tar send your extracted files to some other place using the -C argument, followed by the target location: $ tar xvf archivename.tar -C /home/mydata/oldfiles/ That, in the example, will save new copies of the original files and directories in the current location. tar filename extension isn’t necessary, but it’s always a good idea to clearly communicate the purpose of a file in as many ways as possible.Įxtracting your archive in order to restore the files is easy: Just use xvf instead of cvf. If you’re following along on your own computer (as you definitely should), then you’ll see a new file named archivename.tar. You should also note that using a dot (.) instead of an asterisk (*) in the previous command would include even hidden files (whose filenames begin with a dot) in the archive. The tar command will never move or delete any of the original directories and files you feed it – it only makes archived copies. The * is what tells tar to include all files and local directories recursively. f points to the filename I’d like to give the archive.v sets the screen output to verbose so I’ll get updates, and.the c tells tar to create a new archive,.Here I use three arguments after the tar command: This example will take all the files and directories within and below the current work directory and build an archive file that I’ve cleverly named archivename.tar. In this article, based on content from my Linux in Action book, I'm going to show you the basics of tar archive creation, compression, and restoration. But the truth is that, over all the years and through all the seismic changes to the IT world, tar has lost none of its power and value. That suggests that the tar tool might be a bit old and past its prime. The "tapes" in question would be all those magnetic storage drives that were popular all the way back in the 1950s. The name tar is, by most accounts, short for tape archive.
