>
> To make (or unpack) a tarball in general: at the shell prompt
> man tar
>
Just to amplify that a bit, with $ representing the shell prompt:
to create a tarball:
$ tar -cvzf name_of_archive_to_create directory_to_send
That will show you the files in "directory_to_send" being wrapped up. If
it's only one file at a time, just give the filename. Use a relative path,
not an absolute one, so you can restore anywhere you want.
To unpack, cd into the directory you want to use, and execute
$ tar -xzvf name_of_archive_to create
If you don't want to see all the filenames, omit the "v" option. The "f"
option must be the last thing before the filename.
HTH.