Compress in .tgz

A tar.gz file and a .tgz file are similar.

Compress files using tar:

tar -cvzf <name of tarball>.tgz /path/to/source/folder

for example, I want to create a backup.tgz or backup.tar.gz from folder /home/user/project

tar -cvzf backup.tgz /home/user/project

tar -cvzf backup.tar.gz /home/user/project

You can use tar cvzf instead of tar -cvzf as well.

Extract .tgz or .tar.gz files using tar

tar -xvzf backup.tgz

tar -xvzf backup.tar.gz

Mnemonic for compression (the order of the flags do not matter)

• C ompress
• Z ee
• F ile
• V erbose

Mnemonic for extraction (the order of the flags do not matter)

• e X tract
• Z ee
• F ile
• V erbose

It's the same. Just rename the file from file.tar.gz to file.tgz.