How do I create a tarball (.tgz or .tar.gz) of my application code in Linux?

Background

You have all of your application code on a running Linux server and you want to create a tarball (.tgz or .tar.gz) of the codebase so that you can upload it to a remote object storage (ROS) container so that it can be retrieved at boot time by an application server. 

ServerTemplates published by RightScale contain scripts that retrieve application code by checking it out from a software code repository (Git or SVN) or downloading a tarball from an ROS container.

Answer

1. SSH into the running Linux server that contains your application code.
2. Locate the root directory of your application. If you used an application ServerTemplate published by RightScale, the default directory is /home/webapps/<APPLICATION_NAME>
   
   For example:

# sudo -i
# cd /home/webapps
# ls
myapp   myapptimestamp
# cd myapp

3. Once you are in the root directory, run the following UNIX command to create a tarball and save it in the directory above. You can create either a .tgz or a tar.gz file type. In the example below, we're creating a file called 'phpapp.tgz'.

# tar -cvzf ../phpapp.tgz *
css/
css/style.css
images/
images/logo.png
index.php
phpinfo.php

# ls ../
myapp   myapptimestamp   phpapp.tgz

4. (Optional) Use the sample code below to send an email to yourself with the tarball as an attachment so that you can upload it to an ROS container. Follow the subsequent instructions to configure the contents of the email message.
   
   For example:

# mutt -s "MessageTitle" -a /home/webapps/phpapp.tgz user@example.com

See also

• PHP App Server (v12.11 LTS)