Date: 2007nov2 Updates: 2017oct28 Level: Beginner Q. What is a "tar ball" ? A. A "tar ball" is just an archive made with the tar program. Tar is the usual Linux/Unix archive program -- like zip in the Windows world. It would typically have suffix (extension) of: .tar = tar file .tar.gz = tar file compressed with gzip .tgz = also a tar file compressed with gzip .tar.bzip2 = tar file compressed with bzip2 .tar.xz = tar file compressed with xz Create like this:

tar cfv MYTAR.tar MYDIR tar cfvz MYTAR.tar.gz MYDIR tar cfvz MYTAR.tgz MYDIR tar cfvj MYTAR.tar.bzip2 MYDIR

Extract/Unarchive like this:

tar xfv MYFILE.tar tar xfvz MYFILE.tar.gz tar xfvz MYFILE.tgz tar xfvj MYFILE.tar.bzip2