* to extract, be lazy, use unp, it does all the syntax for you. unp filename.tar.7z.rar.gz
unp is available on repository apt-get install unp
* To group multiple files : tar -cvf foo.tar a.dat b.dat c.dat
( this will group files [a-c]*.dat to one file foo.tar )\\
c = create a tar file\\
v = verbose( nothing important :P )\\
f = create the tar file with filename provided as the argument\\
Thats all you need to know to tar(group) a bunch of files/directories.
* To tar files and gzip them : tar -czf foo.tar.gz *.dat
( this will create a gzip-compressed Tar file of the name foo.tar.gz of all files with a .dat suffix in that directory )
* To untar(separate) files from a tar archive : tar -xvf foo.tar
( this will produce three separate files a.dat, b.dat and c.dat )
* To untar(extract) a gzipped tar archive file : tar -xzf foo.tar.gz
* To untar a bzipped (.bz2) tar archive file : tar -xjf foo.tar.bz2
------
slicing files can also be useful
More info for beginners. I accomplished the above process successfully with these commands:
tar'ed the file with:
nohup nice tar -cf /foo.bu.tar /fooSource &
split the file into 500MB chunks with:
nohup nice split --line-bytes=500m foo.tar.gz foo_ &
rejoined the file with:
nohup nice cat foo_a* > foo_FULL.tar.gz &
hope it works for you too...
BTW, the nohup, nice and '&' are just for running the contained command considerately in the background of my terminal window because the processes took so long.