I am not sure if you got an answer for your question below: <div> > to copy files/directories from .bz2 tarball for editing without decompressing the tarball but you can't do that. First you have to decompress, then edit, then compress again. In order to see the contents of a tarball all you have to do is use the "t" flag, for example tar -jtf tarball.bz2 <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> My goal is to transfer data between computers on CD/DVD. After burning > their properties change but I need to retain their original so I have > to "tar -jcpf tarball.bz2" creating a compressed tarball. Then I get > it burned on CD/DVD. ></blockquote><div> You can do system backups as well if you add the "P" flag to the options not to stip leading "/". </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> > I'm also searching another alternative. Any suggestion? TIA ></blockquote><div> The only other compression scheme that I know is 'zip' which can be combined with 'tar' by passing the 'z' flag instead of 'j' for bz2. Zip works well and fast for relatively small tarballs. </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Furthermore I don't know whether I can add an edited file/directory > back to .bz2 tarball again replacing the old one. Some compression > will allow doing this way. ></blockquote><div> Notice that if you choose any sort of compression for a tarball then you cannot do any incremental additions to it. </div> </div>