Compress folder to folder.tar.gz:

tar -pcvzf file.tar.gz folder

Uncompress:

Just switch the ‘c’ flag to an ‘x’ to extract

tar -pxvzf file.tar.gz -C destination_folder 

Cheatsheet:

p == preserve permissions
c == create archive
v == verbose (print names while making tar)
z == gzip
f == tar file name

 

As read on: www.futurequest.net