How To Compress a Whole Linux or UNIX Directory?

Q. How can I compress a whole directory under Linux / UNIX using a shell prompt?

A. It is very easy to compress a Whole Linux/UNIX directory. It is useful to backup files, email all files, or even to send software you have created to friends. Technically, it is called as a compressed archive. GNU tar command is best for this work. It can be use on remote Linux or UNIX server. It does two things for you:

=> Create the archive
=> Compress the archive

You need to use tar command as follows (syntax of tar command):

$ tar -zcvf archive-name.tar.gz directory-name

Where,

• -z: Compress archive using gzip program
• -c: Create archive
• -v: Verbose i.e display progress while creating archive
• -f: Archive File name

For example, you have directory called /home/jonny/lab and you would like to compress this directory then you can type tar command as follows:

$ tar -zcvf lab-1-jan-2014.tar.gz /home/jonny/lab

Above command will create an archive file called lab-1-jan-202014.tar.gz in current directory. If you wish to restore your archive then you need to use following command (it will extract all files in current directory):

$ tar -zxvf lab-1-jan-2014.tar.gz

Where,

• -x: Extract files

If you wish to extract files in particular directory, for example in /tmp then you need to use following command:

$ tar -zxvf lab-1-jan-2014.tar.gz -C /tmp
$ cd /tmp
$ ls 


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