TAR is a linux command that makes it easy to wrap up entire files & directories and put them into one file that can be moved to another location. Basically it creates a tape archive (TARBALL) of your files, allowing you to extract them later on and even compress their contents via BZIP; plus it’s really fast!

Creating a .TAR

tar -cvvf backup.tar work

…creates a tar file named work.tar which contains everything in work directory and recursively everything beyond

tar -cjvf backup.tbz work

…adding -j enables tar to compress files & directories with bzip, backing up everything in the work directory and everything beyond. note the different extension used -> .tbz denoting it’s a compressed archive

Extracting a .TAR

tar -xvvf backup.tar

…extracts / untar’s everything from the work.tar tarball inside the directory your in

Extract TarBall

if bzipped, extract with…

tar -xjvf backup.tgz

or gzipped, extract with…

tar -xcvf backup.tar.gz

Gzipped ?

GZip is essentially a free version of winzip without the you-gotta-pay-for-it stamp. Now used on it’s own it works on single files turning them into gzipped .gz files, with TAR and it allows you to gzip tons of files (see examples above).

to gzip a file do…

gzip myfile.txt

…this gzips it to myfile.gz

to extract the gzipped file do…

gunzip myfile.gz

Or Simply…

Archive & Compress directory I’m in

tar -zcvf backup.tgz . 

…Then Extract it

tar -xzvf backup.tgz

The following is a short guide on using the Linux VI editor (aka VIM) and a few helpful Linux console commands you may need…

h4. VI Editor

this is an inline text editor which is used within your terminal window to create & edit text files on your system, usually used remotely to setup servers it’s not that hard to get a handle round,

vi filename.txt p. …this will open the VI editor and create a textfile called filename.txt. VI will initally open in INSERT mode so you can just start by adding text to your file like any other editor.

p. …to switch to COMMAND mode, hit the ESC key, the status-bar on the bottom will change to reflect this, now to quit and save your file type :wq and hit enter.

p. …to switch to INSERT mode, press shift + i

p. …if you don’t want to save the file & just quit, type :q! and hit enter.

The VIM editor is a really powerful tool and I’d recommend you to read this guide to get you up to speed if you want to do more advanced things, but this should be good enough to get you going.

h4. Linux Commands

In the terminal window, you can do the following to access & navigate your Linux system:

CD .. p. …this moves you down one directory from where you are

CD mydir p. …moves you to the mydir directory

MKDIR foo p. …creates the directory foo

RM -fr foo p. …deletes the directory foo and any other files & directories within it

MV [from] [to] p. …moves a file or directory from one location to another

PASSWD p. …change current password

Enjoy, will update later,