From: Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com>
>> That's "tar cjf images.tar.bz2 images/" to create compressed tarballs
>> of everything in the images/ dir.  Replace "tar cjf" with "tar xjf"
>> to uncompress.
> I want to keep the original files I'm going to compress.

tar as invoked with c above won't delete or change the files it's turning into
a compressed tarball.

> the man file it looks as if I should use the option '--backup'.

Not really.

> or should I just copy the directories I want to archive?

Unnecessary.  Try creating a tarball on a dir with some files you don't care
about and see.

> when I append these files from the top level directory will it append
> the files under it as well?

Appending files to a compressed tar file probably won't do what you want. 
Remember that tar was originally a TapeARchiver , and tapes aren't seekable in
the way disks are, and the way it works makes a bit more sense.  If you want
to make a compressed archive and change it often, zip would probably be easier
than tar.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see

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