tar -cf archive.tar foo bar                                   #Create „archive.tar“ with the files „foo“ and „bar“
tar -czf archive.tar.gz foo bar                               #Create „archive.tar.gz“ with the files „foo“ and „bar“ with higher compression (gzip) 
tar -tvf archive.tar                                          #Detailed listing of archive „archive.tar“ (verbose)
tar -xf archive.tar                                           #Extracting all data of archive “archive.tar”
tar -xzf archive.tar path/to/folder                           #Extracting just "path/to/folder" (particular folder) from archive “archive.tar”
tar --extract --file={tarball.tar} {file}                     #Extract a directory called file from tarball.tar
tar --extract --file=cbz.tar css                              #Extract a directory called css from cbz.tar
tar -xf cbz.tar --wildcards --no-anchored '*.php'             #To extract all php files
tar -cvf /dev/st0 /home                                       #Backup of /home to taperecoreder st0
tar -cvf /backup/home/tmade.tar /home/tmade                   #backup of /home/tmade to /backup/home/tmade.tar
tar -cvzf /backup/home/tmade.tar.gz /home/tmade               #compressed backup of /home/tmade to /backup/home/tmade.tar.gz
(cd /orignl/path tar -cf  - . ) | (cd /dst/dir;tar -xvf - )   #tar pipe to copy files, alternate to "cp -Ra" 
tar -czvf /mnt/test.tgz --one-file-system /                   #stay on filesystem = /dev/, /proc , /sys and all other mountpoints (if there are) aren´t in the file
tar -xzf bar.tar.gz -C /foo                                   #Untar "bar.tar.gz" to "/foo/*" directory

  -c creates the archive
  -v verbose
  -f the name of the archive to be created after the option f

View contents of archive:

tar -tvf /path/to/*.tar

Exclude files from backup: create a file called exclude.files and save line by line into it like:

/home/tmade/.bashrc                                  #exclude .bashrc
/home/tmade/test*                                    #exclude all files starting with test

than save the backup:

tar -czv -X /home/tmade/excluded.files -f /backup/home/excluded/backup_exclude.tar.gz /home/tmade

Unpack:

tar -xvf /path/to/device                             #writes all files to current directory
tar -xvf /dev/st0                                    #writes all files to current directory

Extract just one file

tar -xvf /path/to/*.tar -C /home/targetdirectory/filename    

Only new created files and folders will be backuped.

First step: Make full backup

tar -cz -g /mnt/newroot/snapshot_file -f /mnt/newroot/full_backup.tar.gz /home

Second step: Make incremental backup

tar -cz -g /mnt/newroot/snapshot_file -f /mnt/newroot/backup_monday.tar.gz /home

Only files and folders with a newer timestamp will be backuped. Newly created empty folders won´t be backuped!

First step: Make full backup

tar –czvf /mnt/newroot/full_backup.tar.gz /home

Second step: Make differential backup

find /home –type f –newer /mnt/newroot/full_backup.tar.gz –print0 | tar ––null –czvf /mnt/newroot/backup_monday.tar.gz –T –

Note:

-print0 and --null ensure files with a spaces in their names are also archived
-T determines that files piped to stdin are included in the archive

Compress:

gzip file.txt

In the above example command this would compress the file.txt file as file.txt.gz in the current directory.

Expand:

gunzip  file.txt.gz

In the above example command it would extract the file.txt from file.txt.gz.