In the section "Installing Portage", the Gentoo installation docs say:
# tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
What does this command do?
In the section "Installing Portage", the Gentoo installation docs say:
# tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
What does this command do?
Tar is used to handle archives (historically saved on tapes).
x
tells it to extract files from the archivev
stands for verbosej
for bzip2 archivef
indicates the file nameC
tells it to change directory (so the package content will be unpacked there)See also man tar
.
change to directory DIR
which is not very helpful. Saying "(so the package content will be unpacked there)" on the other hand, is.
If you ever need to know what a parameter does again, try to read the man first. The command man tar
, and then doing /-C
will get you to the section describing what -C stands for, which in this example represents 'change directory' (i.e. sends the results of the unpacking to /mnt/gentoo/usr
).