You may want to tar -cvpf foo.tar path/to/directory/ where c creates an empty tar v tells you what its doing p preserves permissions f creates a file you can also pipe it into stuff for example tar -cvpf - /var |gzip|ssh hth David On Fri, 2003-03-21 at 16:40, Allan Whiteford wrote: > > On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Allan Bruce wrote: > > > >> How on earth do I tar a directory up to a tarfile?