[newbie] tar help please

[Barry Winch]

Hi, I've tried looking at the tar man page, but still cant get any joy with
tar.

I have a directory called archive, with numerous subdirectories. I want to
save all these files as a single file called all_archive, while preserving
the dirctory structure and permissions, and then finally compress the whole
thing. Can some one show me the correct command please

Thanks

Barry