System Tools and Applications

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Archive and Extraction Tools

In a Linux system, the tar command is usually included by default and does not need to be installed separately. It is one of the core tools and is preinstalled in almost all Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, CentOS, and other Linux distributions.

Install tar if needed:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install tar

By default, tar supports archive creation and extraction. Compression and decompression depend on other tools such as gzip, bzip2, and xz, which are usually also preinstalled.

Tool

Function

Example Command

tar

Create or extract a regular tar archive.

tar -cvf file.tar dir/
tar -xvf file.tar

tar + gzip

Create or extract a gzip-compressed tar archive.

tar -czvf file.tar.gz dir/
tar -xzvf file.tar.gz

tar + bzip2

Create or extract a bzip2-compressed tar archive.

tar -cjvf file.tar.bz2 dir/
tar -xjvf file.tar.bz2

unzip

Extract zip files. The current board lacks zip, so only extraction capability was verified.

unzip file.zip

File System and Disk Tools Verified

Tool

Function

Example Command

df

View capacity, used space, and remaining space of each filesystem mount point.

df -h

du

Calculate directory or file space usage, suitable for checking the size of a specific directory.

du -sh /tmp /etc /var/log

fdisk

Read-only view of disk and partition table information. This test successfully listed the eMMC GPT partitions.

fdisk -l

parted

Read-only view of disk partition tables and partition names.

parted -l

partprobe

Notify the system to reread the partition table. This test only viewed help and did not refresh real devices.

partprobe --help

mount / umount

View mount points or mount/unmount filesystems. This test only read the current mount status.

mount

dd

Block-level data copy tool. This test only performed a safe smoke test writing to the null device.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=1K count=1

Process Management and Monitoring Tools Verified

Tool

Function

Example Command

ps

View the current process list.

ps aux

top

View CPU, memory, and process usage in real time or batch mode.

top -b -n 1

kill / pkill / killall

Terminate specified processes. This test only verified that the commands exist and did not terminate business processes.

kill -9   <br>`pkill `<process_name>

nohup

Run a command in the background and keep it running after the terminal exits.

nohup sh -c "sleep 1; echo nohup-ok" &

nice / renice

Set or adjust process priority.

nice -n 19 sh -c "echo nice-ok"

vmstat

View memory, swap, I/O, scheduler, and CPU overview.

vmstat 1 2

systemctl

View or manage systemd service status.

systemctl status bluetooth --no-pager

journalctl

View systemd logs.

journalctl -n 20 --no-pager