Extract compressed file:

[syntax_prettify linenums=”0″]tar -zxvf file.tar.gz[/syntax_prettify]

Extract uncompressed file:

[syntax_prettify linenums=”0″]tar -xvf file.tar[/syntax_prettify]

Takes everything from folder_to_be_archived/ and puts it into archived_filename.tar:

[syntax_prettify linenums=”0″]tar -cf archived_filename.tar folder_to_be_archived/[/syntax_prettify]