tar
.Sm off
{ -crtux} [-014578befHhjLmOoPpqsvwXZz]
.Sm on
.Bk -words
[blocking-factor| archive | replstr]
[-C directory]
[-I file]
[file]...
.Ek
tar
{
[-014578eHhjLmOoPpqvwXZz]
[-b blocking-factor]
[-C directory]
[-f archive]
[-I file]
[-s replstr]
[file]...
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
stored equally well on a floppy, CD-ROM, or in a regular disk file.
In the first (legacy) form, all option flags except for
-C
and
-I
must be contained within the first argument to
tar
and must not be prefixed by a hyphen
(‘-’).
Option arguments, if any, are processed as subsequent arguments to
tar
and are processed in the order in which their corresponding option
flags have been presented on the command line.
In the second and preferred form, option flags may be given in any order
and are immediately followed by their corresponding option argument
values.
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.
The
file
arguments may be specified as glob patterns (see
glob(3)
for more information), in which case
tar
will list all archive members that match each pattern.
-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.
The
file
arguments may be specified as glob patterns (see
glob(3)
for more information), in which case
tar
will extract all archive members that match each pattern.
If more than one copy of a file exists in the
archive, later copies will overwrite earlier copies during
extraction.
The file mode and modification time are preserved
if possible.
The file mode is subject to modification by the
umask(2).
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 than 63 violate the
POSIX
standard and will not be portable to all systems.
-C directory
This is a positional argument which sets the working directory 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.
-e
Stop after the first error.
-f archive
Filename where the archive is stored.
Defaults to
/dev/rst0.
-H
Follow symlinks given on the command line only.
-h
Follow symbolic links as if they were normal files
or directories.
In extract mode this means that a directory entry in the archive
will not overwrite an existing symbolic link, but rather what the
link ultimately points to.
-I file
This is a positional argument which reads the names of files to
archive or extract from the given file, one per line.
-j
Compress archive using bzip2.
The bzip2 utility must be installed separately.
-L
Synonym for the
-h
option.
-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
Do not strip leading slashes
(‘/’)
from pathnames.
The default is to strip leading slashes.
-p
Preserve user and group ID as well as file mode regardless of
the current
umask(2).
The setuid and setgid bits are only preserved if the user is
the superuser.
Only meaningful in conjunction with the
-x
flag.
-q
Select the first archive member that matches each
file
operand.
No more than one archive member is matched for each
file.
When members of type directory are matched, the file hierarchy rooted at that
directory is also matched.
-s replstr
Modify the archive member names according to the substitution expression
replstr,
using the syntax of the
ed(1)
utility regular expressions.
file
arguments may be given to restrict the list of archive members to those
specified.
The format of these regular expressions is
/old/new/[gp]
As in
ed(1),
old
is a basic regular expression (see
re_format(7))
and
new
can contain an ampersand
("&"),
"\e"
(where
n
is a digit) back-references,
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, terminating 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:
Em original-pathname No >> Em 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.
The options
[-014578]
can be used to select one of the compiled-in backup devices,
/dev/rstN.
ENVIRONMENT
TMPDIR
Path in which to store temporary files.
TAPE
Default tape device to use instead of
/dev/rst0.
FILES
/dev/rst0
default archive name
EXAMPLES
Create an archive on the default tape drive, containing the files named
bonvole
and
sekve:
$ tar c bonvole sekve
Output a
gzip(1)
compressed archive containing the files
bonvole
and
sekve
to a file called
foriru.tar.gz:
$ tar zcf foriru.tar.gz bonvole sekve
Verbosely create an archive, called
backup.tar.gz,
of all files matching the shell
glob(3)
function
*.c:
$ tar zcvf backup.tar.gz *.c
Verbosely list, but do not extract, all files ending in
.jpeg
from a compressed archive named
backup.tar.gz.
Note that the glob pattern has been quoted to avoid expansion by the shell:
$ tar tvzf backup.tar.gz '*.jpeg'
For more detailed examples, see
pax(1).
DIAGNOSTICS
tar
will exit with one of the following values:
0
All files were processed successfully.
1
An error occurred.
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
option 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 directories 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.