#tar

7 one-liners with this tag.

Back up a Docker volume to a tar archive

#docker run --rm -v app_data:/data:ro -v /root/docker-backup:/backup alpine tar czf /backup/app_data.tar.gz -C /data .

Copy a directory to another server with tar over SSH

$tar czf - -C /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs . | ssh webuser@neuserver.example.com "tar xzf - -C /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs"

Create a compressed tar backup with the date in the name

#tar -czf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs .

cautionrsync and backup

Extract a tar.gz archive without overwriting files

$mkdir -p /tmp/restore && tar -xzf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-2026-10-09.tar.gz -C /tmp/restore --skip-old-files

cautionrsync and backup

List the contents of a tar.gz archive

$tar -tzvf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-2026-10-09.tar.gz | head -50

harmlessrsync and backup

Restore a single file from a tar backup

$mkdir -p /tmp/restore && tar -xzf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-2026-10-09.tar.gz -C /tmp/restore ./wp-config.php

cautionrsync and backup

Stream a tar backup directly to another server over SSH

$tar -czf - -C /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs . | ssh webuser@backup.example.com 'cat > /home/webuser/backup/example.com-httpdocs.tar.gz'

cautionrsync and backup