tar is a UNIX program for archiving data. While tar does not compress your data, it can be used to combine many files into a single file or tarball which can then be compressed or transferred to another machine for storage.

It is important to note that when you create a tarball, you will need enough free disk space available. For example, if you are archiving 5 MB of data files, you need another 5 MB available on your UNIX account to create a tarball. If you have insufficient disk space, you will receive an error.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Using Tar

Tar is the UNIX utility for combining several files into a single archive. The syntax for using Tar to create an archive is

tar cvf tarfile filename1 filename2

This will create a file called tarfile.tar that is an archive of the files filename1 and filename2. The extension used for Tar files is .tar.

Tar can also be used to archive the entire contents of a directory by typing

tar cvf tarfile -c directoryname

Tar does not automatically delete the original files, so to do that, you would type

rm filename

at the prompt.

To extract files from an archive, type

tar x tarfile

Full usage instructions for Tar can be obtained by typing man tarat the UNIX command prompt.