cron and tar files
 

I am relatively new to Linux but I like the challenge of building a knowledge base in something that is different and challenging to grasp. My problem is that my instructor in school does not exactly teach or instuct much. I need to be taught the basics first and shown.I am having a problem trying to use cron to create a tar file of another file five minutes after i type it in. Could you please show me how to do this or give me something similar to give me a foundation for learning this cron. Thank you.

do
man crontab
man tar
man vi
read some docs firs, and you'll get everything explained from basics
...
I'm not sure what exactly are you trying to but you need to edit crontab similar to this
crontab -e Username

5,0 * * * * /home/tarscript > /dev/null 2>&1

and then edit tarscript like this

tar cvfz /home/yourtaredfiles.tar.gz /home/yourdir/