How to gzip a tar file:
gzip filename.tar
How to decompress a gzip file back to a tar file:
gunzip filename.tar.gz
How to create a .tgz file from a set of folders:
tar -czvf filename.tgz /folder/to/backup
How to decompress a .tgz file:
tar -xzvf archive.tgz
How to extract files from a compressed tarball:
# extract to same directory
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz
# extract to a specific directory
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz -C /location/to/extract/to
How to list files in tar or compressed tar file
tar -tf archive.tar
tar -tzf archive.tar.gz
How to tell which versions of tar and gzip are installed on your machine:
tar --version
gzip -v