5) Add more files to a tarball. Create tar Archive File in Linux. Linux tar command The term âtarâ also refers to the file format of the resulting archive file. 1. 1. backup command tar â How to use tar for backing up unix and linux files. Example 1: Extracting tar Files to a Specific Directory. In the first example, I will extract the files in articles.tar to a directory /tmp/my_article. Always make sure that the directory into which you want to extract tar file exists. Let me start by creating the /tmp/my_article directory using the command below: Tar in Linux â Tar GZ, Tar File, Tar Directory, and Tar Compress ... When this option is used, when tar encounters a symbolic link, it will archive the linked-to file, instead of simply recording the presence of a symbolic link. # bzip2 file1 file2 file3. To avoid this, and search for strictly âappleâ, you can use this command: $ grep "\