He did include the j option. 
However, Mike, there is a difference between a zip (.zip) file, a gzip (.gz) file, and  (bz) file. So be careful of your file extensions. Also, it's common to use tgz or tbz as file extensions of compressed tar files. 

Eric

On Dec 3, 2011, at 8:35 PM, James Mcphee <jmcphe@gmail.com> wrote:

not a criticism, merely a note.  adding a z or j to the options will compress said tarfile, which greatly decreases the size of things like text.
tar xjvf file.tar.bz2 /files/to/tar/*

On Dec 3, 2011 8:14 PM, "Jim March" <1.jim.march@gmail.com> wrote:
I thought tar files were used by roofing companies?

On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:
> oh yeah.... if any of you want the file let me know.
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 6:48 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I made my first tar file just a few minutes ago! I wanted to put the new
>> kernel on the other machine too because from what I've read the 3.x.x
>> version of the kernel does all sorts of nice things. One of those nice
>> things is that it automatically defragments now. What other  nice things
>> have you discovered about it?
>>
>> Anyways, there i go off on another tangent....As I was saying, what I did
>> is combined the three files together (with another with instructions to
>> install it) with tar  and emailed it to myself with the command:
>>
>>      tar cjf 3.1.4.tar.zip *
>>
>> So let's open this up to discussion. If you don't think that was the best
>> way to do it let's hear some constructive criticism.
>>
>> --
>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
>
>
>
> --
> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
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