Linux Beginner

What is Tar?

A utility for creating and extracting archive files that combine multiple files and directories into a single file.

Tar (Tape Archive) bundles files together. Common operations: tar -czf archive.tar.gz dir/ (create compressed), tar -xzf archive.tar.gz (extract). Compression formats include gzip (.tar.gz), bzip2 (.tar.bz2), and xz (.tar.xz).

Tar preserves file permissions, ownership, and directory structure. It is the standard archiving tool in Linux, used for backups, software distribution, and file transfers.

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