Copyright © 1992, 1994–1997, 1999–2001, 2003–2017,
2021–2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being “GNU General Public License”, with the
Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual”, and with the Back-Cover Texts
as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section
entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to
copy and modify this GNU manual.”
Copyright © 1992, 1994–1997, 1999–2001, 2003–2017,
2021–2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being “GNU General Public License”, with the
Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual”, and with the Back-Cover Texts
as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section
entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to
copy and modify this GNU manual.”
The first part of this master menu lists the major nodes in this Info
document. The rest of the menu lists all the lower level nodes.
| 1 Introduction |
2 Tutorial Introduction to tar |
3 Invoking GNU tar |
4 GNU tar Operations |
| 5 Performing Backups and Restoring Files |
6 Choosing Files and Names for tar |
| 7 Date input formats |
| 8 Controlling the Archive Format |
| 9 Tapes and Other Archive Media |
| 10 Reliability and Security |
Appendices
|
|---|
| Appendix A Changes |
| Appendix B Recipes | Frequently used tar recipes
|
| Appendix C Configuring Help Summary |
| Appendix D Fixing Snapshot Files |
| Appendix E Tar Internals |
| Appendix F Genfile |
| Appendix G GNU Free Documentation License |
| Appendix H Index of Command Line Options |
| Appendix I Index |
— The Detailed Node Listing —
Introduction
|
|---|
| 1.1 What this Book Contains |
| 1.2 Some Definitions |
1.3 What tar Does |
1.4 How tar Archives are Named |
1.5 GNU tar Authors |
| 1.6 Reporting bugs or suggestions |
Tutorial Introduction to tar
|
|---|
| 2.1 Assumptions this Tutorial Makes |
| 2.2 Stylistic Conventions |
2.3 Basic tar Operations and Options |
| 2.4 The Three Most Frequently Used Operations |
| 2.5 Two Frequently Used Options |
| 2.6 How to Create Archives |
| 2.7 How to List Archives |
| 2.8 How to Extract Members from an Archive |
| 2.9 Going Further Ahead in this Manual |
Two Frequently Used Options
|
|---|
| The ‘--file’ Option |
| The ‘--verbose’ Option |
| Getting Help: Using the ‘--help’ Option |
How to Create Archives
|
|---|
| 2.6.1 Preparing a Practice Directory for Examples |
| 2.6.2 Creating the Archive |
| 2.6.3 Running ‘--create’ with ‘--verbose’ |
| 2.6.4 Short Forms with ‘create’ |
| 2.6.5 Archiving Directories |
How to List Archives
|
|---|
| Listing the Contents of a Stored Directory |
How to Extract Members from an Archive
|
|---|
| 2.8.1 Extracting an Entire Archive |
| 2.8.2 Extracting Specific Files |
| 2.8.3 Extracting Files that are Directories |
| 2.8.4 Extracting Archives from Untrusted Sources |
| 2.8.5 Commands That Will Fail |
Invoking GNU tar
|
|---|
3.1 General Synopsis of tar |
3.2 Using tar Options |
| 3.3 The Three Option Styles |
3.4 All tar Options |
3.5 GNU tar documentation | Where to Get Help.
|
3.6 Obtaining GNU tar default values | What are the Default Values.
|
3.7 Checking tar progress |
| 3.8 Checkpoints |
| 3.9 Controlling Warning Messages |
| 3.10 Asking for Confirmation During Operations |
| 3.11 Running External Commands |
The Three Option Styles
|
|---|
| 3.3.1 Long Option Style |
| 3.3.2 Short Option Style |
| 3.3.3 Old Option Style |
| 3.3.4 Mixing Option Styles |
All tar Options
|
|---|
| 3.4.1 Operations |
3.4.2 tar Options |
| 3.4.3 Short Options Cross Reference |
| 3.4.4 Position-Sensitive Options |
Controlling Warning Messages
|
|---|
3.9.1 Keywords controlling tar operation | Keywords applicable for tar --create.
|
3.9.2 Keywords applicable for tar --create |
3.9.3 Keywords applicable for tar --extract |
| 3.9.4 Keywords controlling incremental extraction |
| 3.9.5 Warning Classes | Convenience keywords control multiple warnings.
|
| 3.9.6 Default Warning Settings | Default settings for warnings.
|
GNU tar Operations
|
|---|
4.1 Basic GNU tar Operations |
4.2 Advanced GNU tar Operations |
| 4.3 Options Used by ‘--create’ |
| 4.4 Options Used by ‘--extract’ |
| 4.5 Backup options |
| 4.6 Looking Ahead: The Rest of this Manual |
Advanced GNU tar Operations
|
|---|
4.2.1 The Five Advanced tar Operations |
| 4.2.2 How to Add Files to Existing Archives: ‘--append’ |
| 4.2.3 Updating an Archive |
| 4.2.4 Combining Archives with ‘--concatenate’ |
| 4.2.5 Removing Archive Members Using ‘--delete’ |
| 4.2.6 Comparing Archive Members with the File System |
How to Add Files to Existing Archives: ‘--append’
|
|---|
| 4.2.2.1 Appending Files to an Archive |
| 4.2.2.2 Multiple Members with the Same Name |
Updating an Archive
|
|---|
| 4.2.3.1 How to Update an Archive Using ‘--update’ |
Options Used by ‘--create’
|
|---|
| 4.3.1 Overriding File Metadata |
| 4.3.2 Extended File Attributes |
| 4.3.3 Ignore Failed Read |
Options Used by ‘--extract’
|
|---|
| 4.4.1 Options to Help Read Archives |
4.4.2 Changing How tar Writes Files |
| 4.4.3 Coping with Scarce Resources |
Options to Help Read Archives
|
|---|
| Reading Full Records |
| Ignoring Blocks of Zeros |
Changing How tar Writes Files
|
|---|
| Options Controlling the Overwriting of Existing Files |
| Overwrite Old Files |
| Keep Old Files |
| Keep Newer Files |
| Unlink First |
| Recursive Unlink |
| Setting Data Modification Times |
| Setting Access Permissions |
| Directory Modification Times and Permissions |
| Writing to Standard Output |
| Writing to an External Program |
| Removing Files |
Coping with Scarce Resources
|
|---|
| Starting File |
| Same Order |
Performing Backups and Restoring Files
|
|---|
5.1 Using tar to Perform Full Dumps |
5.2 Using tar to Perform Incremental Dumps |
| 5.3 Levels of Backups |
| 5.4 Setting Parameters for Backups and Restoration |
| 5.5 Using the Backup Scripts |
| 5.6 Using the Restore Script |
Setting Parameters for Backups and Restoration
|
|---|
| 5.4.1 General-Purpose Variables |
| 5.4.2 Magnetic Tape Control |
| 5.4.3 User Hooks |
| 5.4.4 An Example Text of ‘Backup-specs’ |
Choosing Files and Names for tar
|
|---|
| 6.1 Choosing and Naming Archive Files | Choosing the Archive’s Name
|
| 6.2 Selecting Archive Members |
| 6.3 Reading Names from a File |
| 6.4 Excluding Some Files |
| 6.5 Wildcards Patterns and Matching |
| 6.6 Quoting Member Names | Ways of Quoting Special Characters in Names
|
| 6.7 Modifying File and Member Names |
| 6.8 Operating Only on New Files |
| 6.9 Descending into Directories |
| 6.10 Crossing File System Boundaries |
Reading Names from a File
|
|---|
6.3.1 NUL-Terminated File Names |
Excluding Some Files
|
|---|
Problems with Using the exclude Options |
Wildcards Patterns and Matching
|
|---|
| Controlling Pattern-Matching |
Crossing File System Boundaries
|
|---|
| 6.10.1 Changing the Working Directory | Changing Directory
|
| 6.10.2 Absolute File Names |
Date input formats
|
|---|
| 7.1 General date syntax | Common rules
|
| 7.2 Calendar date items | 21 Jul 2020
|
| 7.3 Time of day items | 9:20pm
|
| 7.4 Time zone items | UTC, -0700, +0900, …
|
| 7.5 Combined date and time of day items | 2020年07月21日T20:02:00,000000-0400
|
| 7.6 Day of week items | Monday and others
|
| 7.7 Relative items in date strings | next tuesday, 2 years ago
|
| 7.8 Pure numbers in date strings | 20200721, 1440
|
| 7.9 Seconds since the Epoch | @1595289600
|
| 7.10 Specifying time zone rules | TZ="America/New_York", TZ="UTC0"
|
7.11 Authors of parse_datetime | Bellovin, Eggert, Salz, Berets, et al.
|
Controlling the Archive Format
|
|---|
| 8.1 Using Less Space through Compression |
| 8.2 Handling File Attributes |
8.3 Making tar Archives More Portable |
8.4 Making tar Archives More Reproducible |
8.5 Comparison of tar and cpio |
Using Less Space through Compression
|
|---|
| 8.1.1 Creating and Reading Compressed Archives |
| 8.1.2 Archiving Sparse Files |
Creating and Reading Compressed Archives
|
|---|
8.1.1.1 Using lbzip2 with GNU tar. |
Making tar Archives More Portable
|
|---|
| 8.3.1 Portable Names |
| 8.3.2 Symbolic Links |
| 8.3.3 Hard Links |
| 8.3.4 Old V7 Archives |
| 8.3.5 Ustar Archive Format | Ustar Archives
|
8.3.6 GNU and old GNU tar format | GNU and old GNU format archives.
|
8.3.7 GNU tar and POSIX tar | POSIX archives
|
| 8.3.8 Checksumming Problems |
| 8.3.9 Large or Negative Values | Large files, negative time stamps, etc.
|
8.3.10 How to Extract GNU-Specific Data Using Other tar Implementations |
GNU tar and POSIX tar
|
|---|
| 8.3.7.1 Controlling Extended Header Keywords |
How to Extract GNU-Specific Data Using Other tar Implementations
|
|---|
| 8.3.10.1 Extracting Members Split Between Volumes | Members Split Between Volumes
|
| 8.3.10.2 Extracting Sparse Members | Sparse Members
|
Tapes and Other Archive Media
|
|---|
| 9.1 Device Selection and Switching | Device selection and switching
|
| 9.2 Remote Tape Server |
| 9.3 Some Common Problems and their Solutions |
| 9.4 Blocking |
| 9.5 Many Archives on One Tape | Many archives on one tape
|
| 9.6 Using Multiple Tapes |
| 9.7 Including a Label in the Archive |
| 9.8 Verifying Data as It is Stored |
| 9.9 Write Protection |
Blocking
|
|---|
| 9.4.1 Format Variations |
| 9.4.2 The Blocking Factor of an Archive |
Many Archives on One Tape
|
|---|
| 9.5.1 Tape Positions and Tape Marks |
9.5.2 The mt Utility |
Using Multiple Tapes
|
|---|
| 9.6.1 Archives Longer than One Tape or Disk |
| 9.6.2 Tape Files |
| 9.6.3 Concatenate Volumes into a Single Archive |
Reliability and Security
|
|---|
| 10.1 Reliability |
| 10.2 Security |
Reliability
|
|---|
| 10.1.1 Permissions Problems |
| 10.1.2 Data Corruption and Repair |
| 10.1.3 Race conditions |
Security
|
|---|
| 10.2.1 Privacy |
| 10.2.2 Integrity |
| 10.2.3 Dealing with Live Untrusted Data |
| 10.2.4 Security Rules of Thumb |
Recipes
|
|---|
| B.1 Copying directory hierarchies |
| B.2 Restoring Intermediate Directories |
Tar Internals
|
|---|
| Basic Tar Format |
| GNU Extensions to the Archive Format |
| Storing Sparse Files |
| Format of the Incremental Snapshot Files |
| Dumpdir |
Storing Sparse Files
|
|---|
| E.0.1 Old GNU Format |
| E.0.2 PAX Format, Versions 0.0 and 0.1 |
| E.0.3 PAX Format, Version 1.0 |
Genfile
|
|---|
| F.1 Generate Mode | File Generation Mode.
|
| F.2 Status Mode | File Status Mode.
|
| F.4 Exec Mode | Synchronous Execution mode.
|
Copying This Manual
|
|---|
| Appendix G GNU Free Documentation License | License for copying this manual.
|
|
|---|