This list of TAR parameters comes in really handy…. thanks vowe tar.gz -> -xvzf tar.bz2 -> -xvjf tar -> -xvf

To create some archives, just replace the ‘x’ with a ‘c’ and add the files you want to pack as additional parameters So ‘tar -cvjf mytar.tar.bz2 whatever/’ will create a file named mytar.tar.bz2, containing all the files and subdirs below (and including) the directory ‘whatever’.