NAME¶
paxcpio —
copy file archives in and out
SYNOPSIS¶
paxcpio |
-o
[-0AaBcJjLVvZz
]
[-C
bytes
]
[-F
archive
]
[-H
format
]
[-M
flag
]
[-O
archive
]
< name-list
[> archive ] |
paxcpio |
-i
[-06BbcdfJjmrSstuVvZz
]
[-C
bytes
]
[-E
file
]
[-F
archive
]
[-H
format
]
[-I
archive
]
[-M
flag
]
[pattern ... ]
[< archive ] |
paxcpio |
-p
[-0adLlmuVv
]
destination-directory
<
name-list |
DESCRIPTION¶
The
paxcpio command copies files to and from
a
cpio archive.
The options are as follows:
-o- Create an archive. Reads the list of files to store in the archive from
standard input, and writes the archive on standard output.
-A- Append to the specified archive.
-a- Reset the access times on files that have been copied to the
archive.
-B- Set block size of output to 5120 bytes.
-C
bytes- Set the block size of output to
bytes.
-c- Use ASCII format for
cpio header
for portability.
-F
archive- Use the specified file as the input for the archive.
-H
format- Write the archive in the specified format. Recognised formats are:
- ar
- Unix Archiver.
- bcpio
- Old binary
cpio format.
Selected by -6.
- cpio
- Old octal character
cpio
format. Selected by -c.
- sv4cpio
- SVR4 hex
cpio format.
- sv4crc
- SVR4 hex
cpio format with
checksums. This is the default format for creating new
archives.
- tar
- Old tar format.
- ustar
- POSIX ustar format.
-
-
- bin
- These four formats...
- crc
- ...are supported...
- newc
- ...for backwards...
- odc
- ...compatibility only.
-J- Use the xz utility to compress the archive.
-j- Use the bzip2 utility to compress the archive.
-L- Follow symbolic links.
-M
flag- Configure the archive normaliser.
flag is either a numeric value
compatible to strtonum(3) which is
directly stored in the flags word, or one of the following values,
optionally prefixed with “no-” to turn them off:
- inodes
- 0x0001: Serialise inodes, zero device info.
(cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc)
- links
- 0x0002: Store content of hard links only once.
(cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc)
- mtime
- 0x0004: Zero out the file modification time.
(ar, cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc, ustar)
- uidgid
- 0x0008: Set owner to 0:0 (root:wheel).
(ar, cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc, ustar)
- verb
- 0x0010: Debug this option.
- debug
- 0x0020: Debug file header storage.
- lncp
- 0x0040: Extract hard links by copy if link fails.
- numid
- 0x0080: Use only numeric uid and gid values.
(ustar)
- gslash
- 0x0100: Append a slash after directory names.
(ustar)
- set
- 0x0003: Keep ownership and mtime intact.
- dist
- 0x008B: Clean everything except mtime.
- norm
- 0x008F: Clean everything.
- root
- 0x0089: Clean owner and device information.
When creating an archive and verbosely listing output, these
normalisation operations are not reflected in the output, because they
are made only after the output has been shown.
This option is only implemented for the ar, cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc, and
ustar file format writing routines.
-O
archive- Use the specified file name as the archive to write to.
-V- Print a dot (‘.’) for each file written to the
archive.
-v- Be verbose about operations. List filenames as they are written to the
archive.
-Z- Use the compress(1) utility to compress
the archive.
-z- Use the gzip(1) utility to compress the
archive.
-i- Restore files from an archive. Reads the archive file from standard input
and extracts files matching the patterns
that were specified on the command line.
-0- Use the NUL (‘
\0’) character as
a pathname terminator, instead of newline
(‘\n’). This applies only to the
pathnames read from standard input in the write and copy modes, and to
the pathnames written to standard output in list mode. This option is
expected to be used in concert with the
-print0 function in
find(1) or the
-0 flag in
xargs(1).
-6- Process old-style
cpio format
archives.
-B- Set the block size of the archive being read to 5120 bytes.
-b- Do byte and word swapping after reading in data from the archive, for
restoring archives created on systems with a different byte
order.
-C
bytes- Read archive written with a block size of
bytes.
-c- Expect the archive headers to be in ASCII format.
-d- Create any intermediate directories as needed during restore.
-E
file- Read list of file name patterns to extract or list from
file.
-F
archive,
-I
archive- Use the specified file as the input for the archive.
-f- Restore all files except those matching the
patterns given on the command
line.
-H
format- Read an archive of the specified format. Recognised formats are:
- ar
- Unix Archiver.
- bcpio
- Old binary
cpio format.
- cpio
- Old octal character
cpio
format.
- sv4cpio
- SVR4 hex
cpio format.
- sv4crc
- SVR4 hex
cpio format with
checksums.
- tar
- Old tar format.
- ustar
- POSIX ustar format.
-
-
- bin
- These four formats...
- crc
- ...are supported...
- newc
- ...for backwards...
- odc
- ...compatibility only.
-J- Use the xz utility to decompress the archive.
-j- Use the bzip2 utility to decompress the archive.
-m- Restore modification times on files.
-r- Rename restored files interactively.
-S- Swap words after reading data from the archive.
-s- Swap bytes after reading data from the archive.
-t- Only list the contents of the archive, no files or directories will be
created.
-u- Overwrite files even when the file in the archive is older than the
one that will be overwritten.
-V- Print a dot (‘.’) for each file read from the
archive.
-v- Be verbose about operations. List filenames as they are copied in from
the archive.
-Z- Use the compress(1) utility to decompress
the archive.
-z- Use the gzip(1) utility to decompress the
archive.
-p- Copy files from one location to another in a single pass. The list of
files to copy are read from standard input and written out to a directory
relative to the specified directory
argument.
-a- Reset the access times on files that have been copied.
-d- Create any intermediate directories as needed to write the files at
the new location.
-L- Follow symbolic links.
-l- When possible, link files rather than creating an extra copy.
-m- Restore modification times on files.
-u- Overwrite files even when the original file being copied is older than
the one that will be overwritten.
-V- Print a dot (‘.’) for each file copied.
-v- Be verbose about operations. List filenames as they are copied.
ENVIRONMENT¶
TMPDIR- Path in which to store temporary files.
EXIT STATUS¶
The
paxcpio utility exits with one of the
following values:
- 0
- All files were processed successfully.
- 1
- An error occurred.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
Whenever
paxcpio 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
paxcpio cannot create a link to a file,
unless
-M
lncp is given,
paxcpio 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,
paxcpio 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,
paxcpio may have only partially created the
archive, which may violate the specific archive format specification.
SEE ALSO¶
ar(1),
cpio(1),
deb(5),
pax(1),
paxtar(1),
tar(1)
AUTHORS¶
Keith Muller at the University of California, San Diego.
MirOS extensions by
Thorsten Glaser
⟨tg@mirbsd.org⟩.
CAVEATS¶
Different file formats have different maximum file sizes. It is recommended that
a format such as cpio or ustar be used for larger files.
| File format |
Maximum file size |
| ar |
10 Gigabytes - 1 Byte |
| bcpio |
4 Gibibytes |
| sv4cpio |
4 Gibibytes |
| cpio |
8 Gibibytes |
| tar |
8 Gibibytes |
| ustar |
8 Gibibytes |
The backwards-compatible format options are not available in the
pax(1) front-end.
The
-M option is a MirBSD extension,
available starting with Archives written using these options are, however,
compatible to the standard and should be readable on any other system. The
only option whose behaviour is not explicitly allowed by the standard is hard
link unification (write file contens only once) selected by
-M 0x0002.
The
-V option is a GNU extension, available
starting with
The
ar file format matches APT repositories and
the BSD
ar(1) specification, not GNU binutils
(which can however read them) or SYSV systems.
BUGS¶
The
-s and
-S options are currently not implemented.
The
pax file format is not yet supported.
