tar

tar is an archiving program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tarfile. A tarfile may be made on a tape drive, however, it is also common to write a tarfile to a normal file.

• GNU Project Homepage [EN]

• tar [EN] @ Fedora Package
• tar [EN] @ Homebrew Formula

• tar [EN] @ Wikipedia
• tar [DE] @ Wikipedia

Documentation

• GNU tar Manual [EN]

• man 1 'tar' [EN]

Syntax

tar [PARAMETER ...] [FILE/DIRECTORY ...]

Parameters

-A, --catenate, --concatenate

Append tar files to an archive.

-c, --create

Create a new archive.

-d, --diff, --compare

Find differences between archive and file system.

--delete

Delete from the archive.

-r, --append

Append files to the end of an archive.

-t, --list

List the contents of an archive.

-u, --update

Only append files that are newer than the existing in archive.

-x, --extract, --get

Extract files from an archive.

--atime-preserve

Don't change access times on dumped files.

-C DIR, --directory=DIR

Change to directory DIR.

--exclude PATTERN

Exclude files based upon PATTERN.

--exclude-vcs

Exclude files and directories used by following version control systems.

-f ARCHIVE, --file=ARCHIVE

Use archive file or device ARCHIVE.

-g BACKUP, --listed-incremental=BACKUP

Handle new GNU-format incremental BACKUP.

-h, --dereference

Don't dump symlinks; dump the files they point to.

-j, --bzip2

Filter archive through bzip2, use to decompress .bz2 files.

-N DATE, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE

Only store files newer than DATE.

--one-file-system

Stay in local file system when creating archive.

-p, --same-permissions, --preserve-permissions

Extract all protection information.

-S, --sparse

Handle sparse files efficiently.

-v, --verbose

Verbosely list files processed.

-z, --gzip, --ungzip

Filter the archive through gzip.

Examples

Unpack a gzipped tarfile

tar --extract --ungzip --file='test.tar.gz' "${HOME}/tmp"

Get / store a tar file from / on a remote machine using SSH

tar --create --bzip2 --file=- "${HOME}/office" "${HOME}/private" \
| ssh 'melman@neon.raysoft.loc' "cat >${HOME}/backup/$(date +%F).tar.bz2"

ssh 'melman@neon.raysoft.loc' "tar --create --bzip2 --file=- \
   ${HOME}/office ${HOME}/private" >"${HOME}/backup/$(date +%F).tar.bz2"

Create a backup of an operating system using tar

tar --create --gzip --file="/mnt/backup/$(date '+%F').tar.gz" \
  --exclude='/backup.tar.gz' --exclude='/dev' --exclude='/proc' \
  --exclude='/sys' --exclude='lost+found' '/'

Create full & incremental backup of an operating system using tar

tar --create --gzip --file="/mnt/backup/$(date '+%F').tar.gz" \
  --listed-incremental='/mnt/backup/current.snar' \
  --exclude='/dev' --exclude='/mnt' --exclude='/proc' \
  --exclude='/sys' --exclude='lost+found' '/'

cp '/mnt/backup/current.snar' "/mnt/backup/$(date '+%F').snar"

tar --create --gzip --file="/mnt/backup/$(date '+%F').tar.gz" \
  --listed-incremental='/mnt/backup/current.snar' \
  --exclude='/dev' --exclude='/mnt' --exclude='/proc' \
  --exclude='/sys' --exclude='lost+found' '/'

cp '/mnt/backup/current.snar' "/mnt/backup/$(date '+%F').snar"

Restore full & incremental backup using tar

for file in $(ls -1); do
  tar --extract --listed-incremental='/dev/null' --file="${file}"
done