* 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.