What makes tar powerful is that we can combine it with the compression utilities we discussed in a previous exercise to create a compressed archive. tar with the -c and -f options relate to archiving functionalities, but we can also call tar with other options to compress:
-z: Compress the resulting archive usinggzip. Resulting file extension:.tar.gz.-j: Compress the resulting archive usingbzip2. Resulting file extension:.tar.bz2.-J: Compress the resulting archive usingxz. Resulting file extension:.tar.xz.
For example, to compress an archive/tarball of some video files video1.mp4 and video2.mkv, where we want the resulting compress archive to be called videos.tar.bz2 we use the following command:
The compression and archiving results in the concatenation of file extensions. Make sure the extension of the archive name corresponds with the compression option.
Decompressing and Extracting .tar Files
To extract and decompress a compressed .tar archive, we change the option -c to -x:
Be sure to use the right option that corresponds with the compressed format, whether it’s bz2, xz, or gzip.
Instructions
Run the command ls -R to see all the files in the current directory and subdirectories.
Using a gzip command, compress the tarball named files.tar.
Use the tar command with bzip2 compression to create a tarball of the riddles directory using a single command. The desired name of the compressed archive is riddles.tar.bz2.
Use the tar command with xz compression to create a tarball of the riddles directory using a single command. The desired name of the compressed archive is riddles.tar.xz.
Run the command ls -R again to see the resulting files.