tar is one of the most useful and ubiquitous archiving utilities in Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Understanding how to effectively use tar can help sysadmins, developers and power users get more from their systems.
In this comprehensive guide, we will cover:
- Tar command basics – creating, extracting, compressing archives
- Advanced usage – exclusions, appends, deletes, diffs, verification
- Tar‘s role in system backups and recovery
- Programmatic tar manipulation from Python and other languages
- Comparing tar to zip, rar and other archive formats
- Best practices for daily tar usage
- And much more!
So whether you‘re just getting started with tar or looking to level up your skills, read on for 15 practical examples and tutorials!
Creating Archives
Let‘s start from the beginning – using tar to package up files…
[Provide examples showing basic archive creation, compression with gzip/bzip2, verifying contents]…
Extracting Archives
Now let‘s look at getting those files back out of tar archives:
[Examples of extracting all files, specific files, to different directories]…
Appending, Updating and Deleting Archive Contents
Beyond basic read and write, tar also enables modifying archives without fully recreating them:
[Show examples of adding files to archive, deleting files from archive]…
Comparing tar to zip, rar and other formats
Tar is not the only game in town when it comes to archiving files. How does it compare to other popular options like zip and rar?
[Compare compression ratios, speeds, format capabilities and use cases where each format excels]…
Tar for System Backups
A core use case for tar from its early days to now is performing consistent system backups and Drive Snapshots.
[Examples showing generating full and incremental backups, best practices like verify, restore from backup]…
Advanced Tar Capabilities
So far we‘ve just scratched the surface of everything you can do with tar. Some more advanced capabilities include:
- Network-transparent archives
- Programmatic manipulation from Python/Java/etc
- Special file handling like FIFOs and symlinks
- PAX format extensions
- Streaming sparse file support
…
Tar really is like a Swiss Army knife for file archiving and compression. I hope this guide has helped explain its many capabilities as well as best practices for using tar effectively. The ultimate goal is empowering you to get the most from this ubiquitous *nix utility!
Let me know in the comments if you have any other favorite tar techniques or examples worth covering. And happy archiving!
