How to use tar archives

To create a compressed tar archive (from /home):

tar zcvf myarchive.tar.gz /home

To list the contents of a compressed tar archive:

tar --list -zf myarchive.tar.gz

To extract an archive:

tar zxvf myarchive.tar.gz

To extract a particular file from a compressed tar archive:

tar zxvf myarchive.tar.gz "somefilename.pdf"