From LinuxIntro

tar is a command to pack files into an archive of the tar format. You can also use it to extract tar archive files.

Contents 1 pack an archive 2 unpack an archive 3 transmit a folder 4 exclude files

[edit] pack an archive

To create an archive target.tar consisting of the folder /home, use:

tar cvf target.tar /home

[edit] unpack an archive

To unpack an archive file, use

tar xvf target.tar

[edit] transmit a folder

Thanks to the piping mechanism of Unix, you can also use tar to transmit a folder to another computer:

tar cf - <dir> | ssh <user>@<host> tar -xvf  - -C <dir>

[edit] exclude files

tar cvfz filename.tar.gz -X excludefile

In excludefile:

/folder/subfolder

IMPORTANT

There must not be a slash behind a folder name in the exclude file