If you are in the same directory as where your files / folders are placed, then you dont have to specify the file location. i.e.
/usr/home/bleh/bleh
This is how to make a .tar.gz from a Folder
tar czf /path/to/output/folder/filename.tar.gz /path/to/folder
i.e if you are in /path/to/output/ and you want to put the file in /path/to/output/ you can use the following command.
tar czf filename.tar.gz folder
This is how to extract a .tar.gz file
or like i do…
tar -zxvf /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz
i.e if you are in /path/to/folder/
You can do the following…
tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz
View a list of all files in a .tar.gz archive
gunzip -c /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz | tar -tvf -
i.e if you are in /path/to/folder/
You can do the following…
gunzip -c filename.tar.gz | tar -tvf -
Extract a single file from a .tar.gz file
gunzip -c /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz | tar -xvf - path/within/archive/filename.php
i.e if you are in /path/to/folder/
You can do the following…
gunzip -c filename.tar.gz | tar -xvf - path/within/archive/filename.php
You can also add a date stamp to the tarball by using the following example below…
tar -czf public_html-`date +%d%m%y`.tar.gz public_html