Compressing
tar -jcvf [filename.tar.bz2] [folder_to_compress]
Or for .gz files:
tar -zcvf [filename.tgz] [folder_to_compress]
Compressing folder
Sometimes you may get problems with absolute paths. For example, the following command will compress the whole structure /tmp/data/example/ (including tmp and data folders) within the file example.tgz.
tar -zcvf example.tgz /tmp/data/example
To avoid this just use -C, in the following example the full path will by replaced by the name of the last folder called “example“.
tar -zcvf example.tgz -C /tmp/data/ example
Compressing files within a folder
To compress only files within a folder you need to use the -C flag followed by the absolute path and a dot to indicate current folder:
tar -zcvf example.tgz -C /tmp/data/example/ .
Decompress files
tar -jxvf [filename.tar.bz2] [destiny_folder]
Or for .gz files:
tar -zxvf [filename.tar.gz] -C [destiny_folder]