Archiving and Backup related commands

Decompress a file called 'file1.bz2'
# bunzip2 file1.bz2

Compress a file called 'file1'
# bzip2 file1

Decompress a file called 'file1.gz'
# gunzip file1.gz

Compress a file called 'file1'
# gzip file1

Compress with maximum compression
# gzip -9 file1

Create an archive rar called 'file1.rar'
# rar a file1.rar test_file

Compress 'file1', 'file2' and 'dir1' simultaneously
# rar a file1.rar file1 file2 dir1

Decompress rar archive
# rar x file1.rar

Create a uncompressed tarball
# tar -cvf archive.tar file1

Create an archive containing 'file1', 'file2' and 'dir1'
# tar -cvf archive.tar file1 file2 dir1

Show contents of an archive
# tar -tf archive.tar

Extract a tarball
# tar -xvf archive.tar

Extract a tarball into / tmp
# tar -xvf archive.tar -C /tmp

Create a tarball compressed into bzip2
# tar -cvfj archive.tar.bz2 dir1

Decompress a compressed tar archive in bzip2
# tar -xvfj archive.tar.bz2

Create a tarball compressed into gzip
# tar -cvfz archive.tar.gz dir1

Decompress a compressed tar archive in gzip
# tar -xvfz archive.tar.gz

Decompress rar archive
# unrar x file1.rar

Decompress a zip archive
# unzip file1.zip

Create an archive compressed in zip
# zip file1.zip file1

Compress in zip several files and directories simultaneously
# zip -r file1.zip file1 file2 dir1