The Linux Daily

Create/Compress/Archive Almost Any File in Linux (tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, gz, bz, zip, 7z, rar, etc…)

This is a no-frills Linux command line guide/cheat sheet that will help you archive or compress just about any file that you’re bound to come across. If you’d like to have more options, read the man pages! Also, the opposite to this guide about extracting/uncompressing/unarchiving files in Linux can be found here.

Preliminary:

Most compression or archiving methods that you may want are already built into popular distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, etc…), but some of them aren’t. I would recommend installing this group of packages using apt-get, yum, or an equivalent before using this guide (unless of course you already know what you need):

su -c 'yum install unzip zip p7zip rar unrar bzip2 gzip lzma'

.tar

tar cvf filename.tar /dir

.tar.gz

tar czvf filename.tar.gz /dir

.tgz

tar cvzf filename.tgz /dir

.tar.gz2

You probably mean .tar.bz2

.tar.bz

tar cjvf filename.tar.bz /dir

.tbz

tar cjvf filename.tbz /dir

.tar.bz2

tar cjvf filename.tar.bz2 /dir

.tar.Z

.Z is an old naming convention which has moved to .gz.  See .tar.gz above.

.tar.xz

tar cvf -  filenames | lzma > filename.tar.xz 

.gz

gzip filename

.gz2

You probably mean .bz2

.bz

bzip filename

.bz2

bzip2 filename

.Z

.Z is an old naming convention which has moved to .gz.  See .gz above.

.xz

lzma filename

.zip

zip -r filename.zip /dir

.7z

7z a -t7z filename.7z /dir

.rar

rar a filename.rar /dir

.dmg

This is a bit more complicated than what I have time for. Looks like somebody has already figured something out.

.dd

Create these image files using:

dd if=inputfile.dd of=outputfile.dd

.more?

Have more to share? I wouldn’t mind hearing about it in the comments if you do!

.trouble?

Let me know about it in the comments. We’ll get it straightened out.