How do I Compress a Whole Linux or UNIX Directory? Rumi, June 10, 2010 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/jerry/prog and you would like to compress this directory then you can type tar command as follows: $ tar -zcvf prog-1-jan-2005.tar.gz /home/jerry/prog Above command will create an archive file called prog-1-jan-2005.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 prog-1-jan-2005.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 prog-1-jan-2005.tar.gz -C /tmp $ cd /tmp $ ls - Administrations Configurations (Linux)