Questions tagged [tar]
An archive file format (and the program that reads it) commonly used on Unix and Linux.
780
questions
251
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5
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Linux Bash Script, Single Command But Multiple Lines?
I have the following script I wrote by searching Google, and it backs up my Linux system to an archive:
#!/bin/bash
# init
DATE=$(date +20%y%m%d)
tar -cvpzf /share/Recovery/Snapshots/$HOSTNAME_$...
243
votes
3
answers
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Why are tar.xz files 15x smaller when using Python's tar library compared to macOS tar?
Context
I'm compressing ~1.3 GB folders each filled with 1440 JSON files and find that there's a 15-fold difference between using the tar command and Python's built-in tarfile library on macOS or ...
223
votes
6
answers
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How to specify level of compression when using tar -zcvf?
I gzip directories very often at work. What I normally do is
tar -zcvf file.tar.gz /path/to/directory
Is there a way to specify the compression level here? I want to use the best compression ...
221
votes
18
answers
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What is the advantage of using 'tar' today?
I know that tar was made for tape archives back in the day, but today we have archive file formats that both aggregate files and perform compression within the same logical file format.
Questions:
...
205
votes
17
answers
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Is there a way to see any tar progress per file?
I have a couple of big files that I would like to compress. I can do this with for example
tar cvfj big-files.tar.bz2 folder-with-big-files
The problem is that I can't see any progress, so I don't ...
176
votes
7
answers
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views
How to password protect gzip files on the command line?
I want to create some tar.gz (and possibly tar.bz2) files, using the tar command on Ubuntu 10.04.
I want to password protect the file.
What is the command to do this (I have Googled, but found ...
158
votes
2
answers
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create tar with multiple directories and file locations
I have some scripts and files located in various locations like:
/etc/dir1
/var/www/html
/home/somedir
I want to make a tar file so that it copies files and folders with the location structure. ...
148
votes
1
answer
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How do I unzip a tar gz archive to a specific destination?
I want to unpack a .tar.gz file to a specific directory.
The archive file is in /root/Documents. I want to unzip it into /root/Desktop/folder. The folder structure in zipped file should be preserved ...
140
votes
8
answers
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How can I unzip a .tar.gz in one step (using 7-Zip)?
I am using 7-Zip on Windows XP and whenever I download a .tar.gz file it takes me two steps to completely extract the file(s).
I right-click on the example.tar.gz file and choose 7-Zip --> Extract ...
132
votes
1
answer
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Cannot decompress .tar.xz file, getting "xz: Cannot exec: No such file or directory" from tar
Per How do I uncompress a tarball that uses .xz?, I tried tar xf php-5.6.0RC4.tar.xz and tar -xJf php-5.6.0RC4.tar.xz and in both cases I get the following:
tar (child): xz: Cannot exec: No such file ...
131
votes
10
answers
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How to open a .tar.gz file in Windows?
I need to open a file that sadly is only available in the .tar.gz file format and I am using Windows 7. I can unzip the file using 7-zip but after that I still have a .tar file that I can't open in ...
118
votes
11
answers
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Linux / OS X tar incompatibility – tarballs created on OS X give errors when untarred in Linux
When I tar up files on my Macbook and untar them in Linux, I repeatedly get the following warnings/errors:
tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.ino'
tar: Ignoring unknown extended ...
109
votes
2
answers
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How can I use tar command to group files without compression?
I have a very large folder of 120,000+ files. and I need to move them to another location on my same machine (same partition).
I'd like to use the tar command to group them up as a single unit and ...
108
votes
8
answers
279k
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tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
I have written a little script that tars and compresses a list of directories + files.
The script appears to run succesfully, in that a useable .tar.gz file is created after the script runs.
However,...
107
votes
4
answers
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How to obtain maximum compression with .tar.gz? [duplicate]
The way i understand the use of tar + gzip is that tar is normally used to consolidate a grouping of files into a single file, then gzip is used to compress that file.
I recently learned that tar can ...
92
votes
1
answer
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How to untar an archive without the root folder, but keeping the full hierarchy inside it?
If I’ve got a .tar archive, and when I extract it, it gives me a single folder foo containing some more stuff, like this:
foo/
something.txt
another.txt
bar/
something-else.txt
Is there a ...
91
votes
4
answers
58k
views
Equivalent to tar's "--strip-components=1" in unzip?
I have a script that extracts a tar.gz-file to a specified subdirectory mysubfolder:
mkdir mysubfolder; tar --extract --file=sourcefile.tar.gz --strip-components=1 --directory=mysubfolder;
Is there ...
87
votes
2
answers
257k
views
How to tar a directory preserving not only permissions, but ownership too
I have to compress a directory using tar.gz preserving not only permissions, but ownership/groups too.
And, in this directory there are many files that belong to many users.
85
votes
17
answers
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Untar, ungz, gz, tar - how do you remember all the useful options?
I am pretty sure I am not the only one with the following problem: every time I need to uncompress a file in *nix I can't remember all the switches, and end up googling it, which is surprizing ...
81
votes
7
answers
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Which is more efficient - tar or zip compression? What is the difference between tar and zip?
I'm working in Linux environment and want to know about tar and zip commands.
Which is more efficient - tar or zip? I also need to know the differences between the tar and zip commands. Can anyone ...
80
votes
6
answers
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Why do I get files like ._foo in my tarball on OS X?
When I tar certain files in OS X:
tar cvf foo.tar foo
It produces an extra file ._foo in the tarball:
./._foo
foo
which only shows up if I extract it on a non-Mac operating system. But ._foo doesn'...
74
votes
6
answers
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views
How do I password protect a .tgz file with tar in Unix?
I'm using the Unix tar command as follows to tar up a directory and its files:
tar cvzf fileToTar.tgz directoryToTar
Is there a way to password protect the .tgz file? I've created password-...
73
votes
5
answers
34k
views
gzip without tar? Why are they used together?
Why are tar and gzip almost always used together, and not just gzip? Is there any advantage to that method?
71
votes
2
answers
91k
views
What is the correct MIME type for a tar.gz file?
What is the correct MIME type for a tar.gz file?
I've searched around and found several values being used, including:
application/x-gzip
application/x-gtar
application/x-tgz
But I could find no ...
57
votes
5
answers
217k
views
How to tar directory and then remove originals including the directory?
I'm trying to tar a collection of files in a directory called 'my_directory' and remove the originals by using the command:
tar -cvf files.tar my_directory --remove-files
However it is only removing ...
56
votes
8
answers
75k
views
.tar files without directory structure
I'm .taring some files with the path example/super_user/Output.*.
The resulting .tar looks like this:
+ example
+ super_user
- Output.zip
- Output.xml
- Output.txt
...
50
votes
7
answers
208k
views
Extract 7z files with standard linux tools?
I know that you can extract .7z files with 7-zip.
Is there another standard linux program that can do this? Maybe one of these
tar
bzip2
xz
gzip
I will add that bsdtar can do this, but is not ...
50
votes
3
answers
30k
views
Get mac tar to stop putting ._* filenames in tar archives [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why do I get files like ._foo in my tarball on OS X?
I create autoconf scripts on a Mac. When tar runs, it puts all of these ._foobar names in the archive:
libewf-20110312/...
50
votes
3
answers
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Is it possible to mount a .tar file?
The only result of any import when I searched for this was from 2001.
In the intervening decade, have any tools/methods for mounting a tar file as a filesystem (perhaps utilizing fuse) been created?
...
48
votes
6
answers
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views
What is the difference between TAR vs CPIO archive file formats?
I am curious and did a bit of reading but still have questions.
What makes CPIO different than TAR? I was told in another question that tar is for pulling together many files into 1 archive which ...
45
votes
3
answers
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Extract specific files in a tar archive using a wildcard
I'm trying to create a script to extract only jpeg pictures from an archive containing many kind of files.
To do so, I tried to use:
tar -xf MyTar.tar *.jpg
but it failed (*.jpg not found) and ...
45
votes
3
answers
76k
views
How do I tar ball a directory hierarchy with soft links in Linux?
How do I tar ball/compress a directory hierarchy with soft links in Linux?
44
votes
5
answers
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tar – extract discarding directory structure
unzip has a nifty option -j, whereby the directory structure of the archive is discarded, and all files are extracted into the same directory.
Is there a way of making tar work in the same way? ...
44
votes
3
answers
127k
views
Howto pipe: cp | tar | gzip without creating intermediary files?
Can anyone tell me if it's possible to pipe | this without having to create a physical file anywhere between A and B.tar.gz?
This is what I'm trying to do:
File A
Rename A to B
Tar B.tar
gzip -9 B....
44
votes
1
answer
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Extracting a tar.gz file returns, “This does not look like a tar archive.”
I have a tar.gz file and I want to extract it using terminal. I used following commands: tar tvzf ldtp_3.5.0.orig.tar.gz and tar -xvzf ldtp_3.5.0.orig.tar.gz. However, I get the same result for both ...
43
votes
2
answers
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unpack 'tar' but change directory name to extract to
tar -tf filename.tar
folder1/file
folder1/name
[...]
I'd like to extract file and name to, folder2. Can this be done as a one-liner?
43
votes
3
answers
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views
How to tar/untar the output on the fly
What is the idiomatic way to do the following
tar to stdout
read this tar output from stdout and extract to some other folder.
My solution is
tar --to-stdout .. | tar -C somefolder -xvf -
But ...
43
votes
12
answers
535k
views
How to extract a tar file (.tgz) in windows?
How to extract a tar file (.tgz) in windows? Is this possible, or do I have to get into a linux environment and extract it?
42
votes
3
answers
67k
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How do I use 7-Zip CLI for Windows to create .tar.gz archives?
How can I use the 7-Zip CLI (7za.exe) on Windows to create .tgz archives, as I use tar zcvf archive.tgz source_files on Linux?
41
votes
5
answers
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Undo tar file extraction mess
I just untar'd an archive that produced a mess of files into my tidy directory. For example:
user@comp:~/tidy$ tar xvf myarchive.tar
file1
file2
dir1/
dir1/file1
dir1/subdir1/
dir1/subdir1/file1
dir2/...
40
votes
4
answers
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How to get an empty tar archive?
I am making an RPM in which everything is contained in the .spec file (don't ask :-). rpmbuild requires a "Source" file, so I was trying to create an empty tar file. However, if I don't give any ...
39
votes
8
answers
154k
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Linux: what is a most convenient way to see the content of .jar file
What is a most convenient way to see the content of .jar file w/o using unzip/untar commands?
What I'd like to do - is to browsing inside using cd command like it is the usual folder,
seeing content, ...
36
votes
2
answers
36k
views
How can I force only relative paths in "find" output?
I am attempting to create a script that can compress files with a certain extension in a number of directories into a single tar-ball. Currently what I have in the script file is:
find "$rootDir" -...
31
votes
7
answers
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views
How to create tar archive split into, or spanning, multiple files?
According to this page, one can let tar create a tar archive "split" into 100 Mb files:
tar -c -M --tape-length=102400 --file=disk1.tar largefile.tgz
The problem is that this command will ...
29
votes
5
answers
36k
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Between xz, gzip, and bzip2, which compression algorithim is the most efficient?
Between xz, gzip, and bzip2, which compression algorithm gives the smallest file size and fastest speed when compressing fairly large tarballs?
28
votes
6
answers
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How can I create a zip / tgz in Linux such that Windows has proper filenames?
Currently, tar -zcf arch.tgz files/* encodes filenames in UTF, so Windows users see all characters spoiled in filenames which are not english, and can do nothing with it.
zip -qq -r arch.zip files/* ...
27
votes
2
answers
12k
views
What does `tar: Cannot connect to …: resolve failed` mean?
I'm writing a practice bash script that saves a folder as a tar archive with a name date-foldername.bak
The script fails when unformatted date is inserted as part of the filename, so 2022-05-09-work ...
27
votes
5
answers
56k
views
tar -C with a wildcard file pattern
Can I use the tar command to change directories and use a wildcard file pattern?
Here is what I am trying to do:
tar -cf example.tar -C /path/to/file *.xml
It works if I don't change directory (-C),...
27
votes
6
answers
10k
views
How do I create a tar file in alphabetical order?
I want to create a tar file where all of the directories and files are processed in alphabetical order. This is for the entire directory hierarchy that's being tarred up, so it would start by ...
25
votes
3
answers
40k
views
How can I create multipart tar file in Linux?
How can I create a multipart tar file in Linux?