Although Tarballing sounds like a whole lot more fun than it actually is... it's a utility that stores one or more files in a single archieve. The format of the tar command is:

tar [options] [FileToCreate] [FileListToInclude]

Not included in the man page for tar... at least not on Debian.

Common options:

Option	Description
-c	Create a new file
-v	Verbose... tell me what you are doing.
-z	Feed the output into gzip
-f	Create a file.

There are lots of other options...

Example:

tar -cvzf [tarball.file] File1.txt File2.txt File3.txt File4.txt

OR

tar -cvzf [tarball.file] File*.txt

The first command line parameter is the function to perform. One of Acdrtux There should be only one of them... they don't play nice together.

Option	Word	Descrption
-A	--catenate --concatenate	Append the file to an existing archieve.
-c	--create	Create a new file.
-d	--diff --compare	Difference between two files.
	--delete	Delete from archieve.
-r	--append	Append files to the end archieve.
-t	--list	List the contents of an archieve.
	--test-label	Test the vol label and exit.
-u	--update	Append newer files.
-x	--extract --get	Extract the files from the archieve.

Options are different than functions. Where some functions can not be seen together, like c and x, options are not that way. May not make sense... but your mother won't be calling if you do.

There are a miriad of options when Tarballing, here are just a few of them... the important ones... I think.

Option	Long Word	Description
	--add-file	add given file to the archieve. --add-file=myfile.txt
-C	--directory <dir>	change to directory dir
	--checkpoint	Display a progress message every nth record. Default 10.
	--checkpoint-action=<action>	execute action on every checkpoint.
	--exclude=<pattern>	Exclude files that match pattern
-f	--file <filename>	The file to work on*
	--group=<name>	Force the name of group on added files.
-h	--dereference	Follow symlinks and dump the files they point to.
	--ignore-case	Ignore case

-N	--newer, --after-date <date or file>	only stores files newer than date or file
	--overwrite	Overwrite existing files when extracting.
	--owner=<name>	force name as owner
	--recursion	Recurse into subdirectories (default)
	--no-recursion	Do NOT recurse into subdirectories
	--remove-files	Remove files after adding to the archieve
-T	--files-from <file>	Get file names to archieve from file
-v	--verbose	Verbosely list files processed.
-W	--verify	attempt to verify the archieve after writing it
-X	--excllude-from<file>	Exclude patterns listed in file
-z	--gzip --gunzip	Use gzip to compress files

NOTE: the -f options needs to be the last in line because the next command line argument is the file name to work on.

To list the contents of an archieve...

tar -ztvf [tarFileName]

The z is for a zip file, leave that out if it is not a zip file. The t lists the contents. The v is for verbose and f is the switch for the file which must be the last switch so the file name follows it.

Once you make an archieve... eventually... you have to unpack it. Use the same command to unpack it as you did to pack it... but... with the parameter. For eXtract.

-x

tar -xvf [tarball/filename]

You can't use x and c together. It isn't fun and tar doesn't like it.