Here’s how you can to compress and archive files on a Linux server or on your Mac.
gzip file compresses the file. To keep the original file, pass the -k flag.
gunzip uncompresses a .gz file.
However, gzip doesn’t create archives of files, i.e. it doesn’t pack multiple files and dirs into a single file. For that, use the tar command.
tar command creates an archive.
tar cfv archive.tar file1 file2
The c option requires creating the archive, the v option requests the verbose operation, and the f option takes an argument that sets the name of the archive to operate upon.
The following command instructs tar to store all files from the directory /etc into the archive file etc.tar, verbosely listing the files being archived:
tar cfv etc.tar /etc
To unpack a .tar file, use the x flag, which operates tar in extract mode.
tar xvf archive.tar
To unpack a compressed archive, first uncompress the file and then unpack.
gunzip file.tar.gz
tar xvf file.tar
Or, use the shortcut with the z option that does the same.
tar zxvf file.tar.gz
Hope this helps.