Linux and Unix tar command

Create TAR archive (without compression)

tar -cvf  myarchive.tar mydirectory

Create TAR archive with compression (Gzip) archive

tar -czvf myarchive.tgz mydirectory

Note :-tgz is the same thing as .tar.gz

Testing / viewing your archive

tar -tvf myarchive.tar
tar -tzvf myarchive.tgz
Here we used the – t opton
-t, –list    list the contents of an archive

Extracting  TAR archive  

Extract tar archive 

 tar -xvf mystuff.tar

Extract tar gz (Gzip) archive

tar -xzvf mystuff.tgz

Extract tar archive specific folder or file from archive 

tar -xvf file.tar foo.txt
tar -xzvf file.tar.gz foo.txt
tar -xjvf file.tar.bz2 foo.txt

 Example:-

 tar -xvf [tarfilename.tar]  [file name of the specified file form archive]
 tar -xvf MyBackup.tar u01/backup/Misc/scripts/rman_scn_num.sh

 Extract tar archive to specified directory

Example:-
tar -xvf myarchive.tar -C /desired/path
tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz -C /desired/path
  

Extract TAR archive from remote box

Examples

cd /u01
ssh root@192.168.100.99 "cat /u01/axigen.tar" | tar xvf -

Note :- above example will take remote host tar file exact to  local PC u01 folder 

cd /u01 

ssh root@192.168.100.180 "cat /volume1/orbackup/Finsys_WholeBackup_20-04-2013.tar" | tar xvf - 

 

Create TAR tar archive to remote box

Examples:-

tar cvf  - /u01/axigen  | ssh root@192.168.100.99 "cat > /u01/axigen.tar"
tar zcvf - /data | ssh root@192.168.100.77"cat > /backup/data.tar.gz"


Create TAR to remote tape device

# tar cvzf - /wwwdata | ssh root@192.168.1.201 "cat > /dev/nst0"

And now let us shortly explain this command
Usage: tar [OPTION]… [FILE]…
Let us check the option used in this example
-c, –create                      create a new archive
-z, –gzip, –ungzip        filter the archive through gzip
-v, –verbose                   verbosely list files processed
-f, –file=ARCHIVE          use archive file or device ARCHIVE
-C directory file
Performs a chdir  operation on directory and performs the c (create) or r (replace) operation on file .
In c and r mode, this changes the directory before adding the following files. In x mode, change directories after opening the archive but before extracting entries from the archive.