Create (-c)

tar -cf public.tar /path

Compress (-z, -j)

tar -czf public.tgz /path tar -cjf public.bz2 /path

Extract (-x)

tar -xvjf file.tar.bz2 tar -xvzf file.tgz

Options

x Extract c Create z Compress (gzip) j Compress (bzip2) v Verbose

To get LZMA compression you can use –lzma.