tar Cheat Sheet

Create, inspect, and extract archives with compression — the universal packaging tool.

Core DevOps4 sections · 21 commands
⌘K

Creating Archives

6
tar -cvf ARCHIVE.tar DIR

Create a plain archive (verbose)

tar -czf ARCHIVE.tar.gz DIR

Create with gzip compression

tar -cjf ARCHIVE.tar.bz2 DIR

Create with bzip2

tar -cJf ARCHIVE.tar.xz DIR

Create with xz (best ratio)

tar -czf ARCHIVE.tar.gz --exclude='*.log' DIR

Exclude files by pattern

tar -czf ARCHIVE.tar.gz DIR --exclude-backups

Skip backup files

Extracting

7
tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz

Extract a gzipped archive

tar -xf ARCHIVE.tar -C DIR

Extract into a specific directory

tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz --strip-components=1

Drop the top-level folder

tar -xJf ARCHIVE.tar.xz

Extract xz (auto-detect also works)

tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz FILE

Extract a single file

tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz 'pattern*'

Extract files matching a pattern

tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz --one-top-level=DIR

Extract under a prefix directory

Inspecting

4
tar -tzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz

List contents without extracting

tar -tvzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz

List with sizes and permissions

tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz --occurrence=1 FILE

Extract first match only

gzip -t FILE.tar.gz

Verify the archive's integrity

Streaming & Incremental

4
tar -czf - DIR | scp - USER@HOST:

Archive over SSH without a temp file

tar --listed-incremental=SNAPSHOT -czf BACKUP.tar.gz DIR

Incremental with a snapshot file

tar -xzf ARCHIVE.tar.gz -C DIR --same-owner --preserve-permissions

Restore ownership and modes

tar -czPf ARCHIVE.tar.gz /abs/path

Preserve absolute paths (P)