> tar -czf dir/ You forgot the output filename. The thing I like about tar is that you only need to learn two options: 'c' and 'x': tar c somedir | gzip

> tar -czf dir/ You forgot the output filename. The thing I like about tar is that you only need to learn two options: 'c' and 'x': tar c somedir | gzip > somedir.tar.gz cat somedir.tar.gz | gunzip | tar x