How to create a compressed tar.gz archive

Compressing files is an important skill to have. You never know when you might need to move large amounts of data, and knowing how to compress them into a smaller sized single archive can save you a lot of time and disk space. Compressed files are particularly useful for backups and long-term storage of data.

Most desktop operating systems provided built-in support for zip, tar, and/or gzip files. With a graphical interface, it is easy to create compressed files, but on a server, you need to learn how to do it from the command line. The most common Linux compression format is .tar.gz, which is a tarball compressed with gzip.

To compress a directory containing files, type from the secure shell (SSH) prompt:

tar -pczf name-of-archive.tar.gz /home/user/files

You should now have a compressed archive that you can transfer easily and uncompress when you need it.