Create a zipped archive of files and directories, and unzip it

$ tar -cvzf archive.tar.gz dir1 dir2 file1 file2
a dir1
a dir2
a file1
a file2
$ ls
archive.tar.gz

Unzip it

tar -xvz archive.tar.gz

• -c: create archive
• -x: extract archive
• -f: use file name for archive
• -v: verbose
• -z: compress with gzip

Sometimes I'd like to use bzip

$ tar -cvjf folder.tar.bz folder
folder/
folder/file1.txt
folder/subdir2/
folder/subdir2/file2.txt
folder/subdir1/
folder/subdir1/file1.txt

$ tar -xvjf folder.tar.bz 
folder/
folder/file1.txt
folder/subdir2/
folder/subdir2/file2.txt
folder/subdir1/
folder/subdir1/file1.txt

Create a multi-volume zipped archive of files and directories, and restore it

$ tar -cvj folder | split -d -b 99m - "folder.tar.bz"
folder/
folder/file1.txt
folder/subdir2/
folder/subdir2/file2.txt
folder/subdir1/
folder/subdir1/file1.txt
$ ls
folder  folder.tar.bz00  folder.tar.bz01

• -d: use numeric suffixes
• -b: byte size of volumes

Restore the folder

$ cat folder.tar.bz* > folder.tar.bz
$ ls
folder  folder.tar.bz  folder.tar.bz00  folder.tar.bz01
$ tar -xvjf folder.tar.bz
folder/
folder/file1.txt
folder/subdir2/
folder/subdir2/file2.txt
folder/subdir1/
folder/subdir1/file1.txt

References

• Gnu Project home page for tar
• FileCompression, Ubuntu Documentation, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FileCompression