Archiving and compressing are two different jobs. Archiving bundles many files and directories, with their permissions, ownership and timestamps, into one file. Compressing makes a file smaller. tar (tape archive) does the bundling and can call a compressor at the same time, which is why backup files often end in .tar.gz, .tar.bz2 or .tar.xz. A typical exam task reads: 'create a bzip2-compressed archive of /etc named /root/etc.tar.bz2'.
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