tar command

Alexis is a Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator in training. Please give and explain 5 examples of the tar command to increase her proficiency.

Of course, I'd be happy to help Alexis with some examples of the tar command! The tar command is used for creating, maintaining, and extracting archive files in Linux. Here are five examples along with explanations for each:

1. Create a tar archive from a directory:

Explanation:

• c: Create a new archive.
• v: Verbose mode, shows the files being archived.
• f: Specifies the filename of the archive to create.
• archive.tar: The name of the archive file.
• directory_name: The name of the directory you want to archive.

2. Extract files from a tar archive:

Explanation:

• x: Extract files from the archive.
• v: Verbose mode, shows the files being extracted.
• f: Specifies the filename of the archive to extract from.
• archive.tar: The name of the archive file.

3. Create a compressed tar archive (gzip):

Explanation:

• c: Create a new archive.
• v: Verbose mode.
• z: Use gzip compression.
• f: Specifies the filename of the archive to create.
• archive.tar.gz: The name of the compressed archive file.
• directory_name: The name of the directory you want to archive.

4. Extract files from a compressed tar archive (gzip):

Explanation:

• x: Extract files from the archive.
• z: Use gzip compression.
• v: Verbose mode.
• f: Specifies the filename of the archive to extract from.
• archive.tar.gz: The name of the compressed archive file.

5. Append files to an existing tar archive:

Explanation:

• r: Append files to the archive.
• v: Verbose mode.
• f: Specifies the filename of the archive to append to.
• archive.tar: The name of the archive file.
• new_file: The name of the file to append to the archive.

Remember that the order of the options (cvf, xvf, etc.) doesn't matter, as long as they're preceded by a hyphen (-). Alexis can experiment with these commands to become more proficient in using the tar command for various tasks.