File Compression and Archiving in Linux (tar, gzip, zip)

 Introduction

Linux provides several tools to compress and archive files, helping save disk space and simplify backups.

Step 1: Create an Archive with tar

tar -cvf archive.tar file1 file2

➡️ -c create, -v verbose, -f file name.

Step 2: Extract an Archive

tar -xvf archive.tar

Step 3: Compress with gzip

gzip file.txt

➡️ Creates file.txt.gz.

Step 4: Decompress with gunzip

gunzip file.txt.gz

Step 5: Use zip and unzip

zip archive.zip file1 file2

unzip archive.zip

Conclusion

Archiving and compression are essential for storage management and data transfer.