TAR(1) System General Commands Manual TAR(1)
NAME
tar - tape archiver
SYNOPSIS
tar [-]{crtux}[befhmopvwzHLPXZ014578] [archive] [blocksize] [-C directory
] [-s replstr ] file1 [file2...]
DESCRIPTION
The tar command creates, adds files to, or extracts files from an archive
file in tar format. A tar archive is often stored on a magnetic tape,
but can be a floppy or a regular disk file.
One of the following flags must be present:
-c Create new archive, or overwrite an existing archive,
adding the specified files to it.
-r Append the named new files to existing archive. Note that
this will only work on media on which an end-of-file mark
can be overwritten.
-t List contents of archive. If any files are named on the
command line, only those files will be listed.
-u Alias for -r
-x Extract files from archive. If any files are named on the
command line, only those files will be extracted from the
archive. If more than one copy of a file exists in the
archive, later copies will overwrite earlier copies during
extration.
In addition to the flags mentioned above, any of the following flags may
be used:
-b blocking factor
Set blocking factor to use for the archive, tar uses 512
byte blocks. The default is 20, the maximum is 126.
Archives with a blocking factor larger 63 violate the
POSIX
standard and will not be portable to all systems.
-e Stop after first error.
-f archive Filename where the archive is stored. Defaults to
/dev/rst0
-h Follow symbolic links as if they were normal files or
directories.
-m Do not preserve modification time.
-O Write old-style (non-POSIX) archives.
-o Don't write directory information that the older (V7) style
tar is unable to decode. This implies the -O flag.
-p Preserve user id, group id, file mode, access and modifica-
tion times if possible. The user id and group id will only
be set if the user is the superuser (unless these values
correspond to the user's user and group ids).
-s replstr Modify the file or archive member names specified by the
pattern or file operands according to the substitution
expression replstr, using the syntax of the ed(1) utility
regular expressions. The format of these regular expres-
sions are:
/old/new/[gp]
As in ed(1), old is a basic regular expression and new can
contain an ampersand (&), \n (where n is a digit) back-ref-
erences, or subexpression matching. The old string may
also contain <newline> characters. Any non-null character
can be used as a delimiter (/ is shown here). Multiple -s
expressions can be specified. The expressions are applied
in the order they are specified on the command line, termi-
nating with the first successful substitution. The
optional trailing g continues to apply the substitution
expression to the pathname substring which starts with the
first character following the end of the last successful
substitution. The first unsuccessful substitution stops the
operation of the g option. The optional trailing p will
cause the final result of a successful substitution to be
written to standard error in the following format:
<original pathname> >> <new pathname>
File or archive member names that substitute to the empty
string are not selected and will be skipped.
-v Verbose operation mode.
-w Interactively rename files. This option causes tar to
prompt the user for the filename to use when storing or
extracting files in an archive.
-z Compress archive using gzip.
-C directory This is a positional argument which sets the working direc-
tory for the following files. When extracting, files will
be extracted into the specified directory; when creating,
the specified files will be matched from the directory.
-H Follow symlinks given on command line only.
-L Follow all symlinks.
-P Do not strip leading slashes (``/'') from pathnames. The
default is to strip leading slashes.
-X Do not cross mount points in the file system.
-Z Compress archive using compress.
The options [-014578] can be used to select one of the compiled-in backup
devices, /dev/rstN.
FILES
/dev/rst0 The default archive name
SEE ALSO
pax(1), cpio(1)
AUTHOR
Keith Muller at the University of California, San Diego
ERRORS
tar will exit with one of the following values:
0 All files were processed successfully.
1 An error occured.
Whenever tar cannot create a file or a link when extracting an archive or
cannot find a file while writing an archive, or cannot preserve the user
ID, group ID, file mode or access and modification times when the -p
options is specified, a diagnostic message is written to standard error
and a non-zero exit value will be returned, but processing will continue.
In the case where tar cannot create a link to a file, tar will not create
a second copy of the file.
If the extraction of a file from an archive is prematurely terminated by
a signal or error, tar may have only partially extracted the file the
user wanted. Additionally, the file modes of extracted files and direc-
tories may have incorrect file bits, and the modification and access
times may be wrong.
If the creation of an archive is prematurely terminated by a signal or
error, tar may have only partially created the archive which may violate
the specific archive format specification.
BSD June 11, 1996 BSD