Tar command usage

Create the tar file

tar -czvp -f archive.tar.gz foo bar 

Create archive.tar.gz from files foo and bar with the preserved permission

tar -cjvp -f archive.tar.bz2 foo bar

How to split the file:

split -b 4000k archive.tar.gz archive.20120829.tar.gz. -verbose

creating file 'archive.20120829.tar.gz.aa'
creating file 'archive.20120829.tar.gz.ab'
creating file 'archive.20120829.tar.gz.ac'
...

We can merge above 2 commands as one with the pipe | as following:

tar -czvp -f -- archive.tar.gz foo bar |split -b 4000k -- archive.tar.gz archive.20120829.tar.gz. -verbose

tar -tvf archive.tar # List all files in archive.tar verbosely.

How to exact the split tar files?

cat archive.20120829.tar.gz.a* > archive.20120829.tar.gz

cat archive.20120829.tar.gz.a* |tar -zxv

Strange ISSUE:

Under Mac OS, when you tar cfv xx.tar xx, you have some strange extra files start with ._xxx generated.