a07768e948
archive formats supported by libarchive, with some information about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each format and notes about issues with libarchive's support for those formats. This page should make it unnecessary to list all of the libarchive formats in the manpage of each program that uses libarchive. Such programs can simply refer to libarchive-formats(5).
228 lines
9.1 KiB
Groff
228 lines
9.1 KiB
Groff
.\" Copyright (c) 2003-2004 Tim Kientzle
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.\" All rights reserved.
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.\"
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.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\" are met:
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.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
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.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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.\"
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.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
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.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
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.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
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.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
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.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
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.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
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.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
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.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
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.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
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.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
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.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
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.\"
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.\" $FreeBSD$
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.\"
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.Dd April 27, 2004
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.Dt libarchive-formats 3
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.Os
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.Sh NAME
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.Nm libarchive-formats
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.Nd archive formats supported by the libarchive library
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.Sh DESCRIPTION
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The
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.Xr libarchive 3
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library reads and writes a variety of streaming archive formats.
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Generally speaking, all of these archive formats consist of a series of
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.Dq entries .
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Each entry stores a single filesystem object, such as a file, directory,
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or symbolic link.
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.Pp
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The following provides a brief description of each format supported
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by libarchive, with some information about recognized extensions or
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limitations of the current library support.
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Note that just because a format is supported by libarchive does not
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imply that a program that uses libarchive will support that format.
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Applications that use libarchive specify which formats they wish
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to support.
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.Ss Tar Formats
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The
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.Xr libarchive 3
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library can read most tar archives.
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However, it only writes POSIX-standard
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.Dq ustar
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and
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.Dq pax interchange
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formats.
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.Pp
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All tar formats store each entry in one or more 512-byte records.
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The first record is used for file metadata, including filename,
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timestamp, and mode information, and the file data is stored in
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subsequent records.
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Later variants have extended this by either appropriating undefined
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areas of the header record, extending the header to multiple records,
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or by storing special entries that modify the interpretation of
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subsequent entries.
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.Pp
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.Bl -tag -width indent
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.It Cm gnutar
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The
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.Xr libarchive 3
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library can read GNU-format tar archives.
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It currently supports the most popular GNU extensions, including
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modern long filename and linkname support, as well as atime and ctime data.
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The libarchive library does not support sparse files, multi-volume
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archives, nor the old GNU long filename format.
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.It Cm pax
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The
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.Xr libarchive 3
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library can read and write POSIX-compliant pax interchange format
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archives.
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Pax interchange format archives are an extension of the older ustar
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format that adds a separate entry with additional attributes stored
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as key/value pairs.
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The presence of this additional entry is the only difference between
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pax interchange format and the older ustar format.
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The extended attributes are of unlimited length and are stored
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as UTF-8 Unicode strings.
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Keywords defined in the standard are in all lowercase; vendors are allowed
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to define custom keys by preceding them with the vendor name in all uppercase.
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When writing pax archives, libarchive uses many of the SCHILY keys
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defined by Joerg Schilling's
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.Dq star
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archiver.
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The libarchive library can read most of the SCHILY keys.
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It ignores any keywords that it does not understand.
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.It Cm restricted pax
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The libarchive library can also write pax archives in which it
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attempts to suppress the extended attributes entry whenever
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possible.
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The result will be identical to a ustar archive unless the
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extended attributes entry is required to store a long file
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name, long linkname, extended ACL, file flags, or if any of the standard
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ustar data (user name, group name, UID, GID, etc) cannot be fully
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represented in the ustar header.
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In all cases, the result can be dearchived by any program that
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can read POSIX-compliant pax interchange format archives.
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.It Cm ustar
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The libarchive library can both read and write this format.
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This format has the following limitations:
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.Bl -bullet -compact
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.It
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Device major and minor numbers are limited to 21 bits.
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Nodes with larger numbers will not be added to the archive.
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.It
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Path names in the archive are limited to 255 bytes.
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(Shorter if there is no / character in exactly the right place.)
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.It
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Symbolic links and hard links are stored in the archive with
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the name of the referenced file.
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This name is limited to 100 bytes.
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.It
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Extended attributes, file flags, and other extended
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security information cannot be stored.
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.It
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Archive entries are limited to 2 gigabytes in size.
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.El
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Note that the pax interchange format has none of these restrictions.
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.El
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.Pp
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The libarchive library can also read a variety of commonly-used extensions to
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the basic tar format.
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In particular, it supports base-256 values in certain numeric fields.
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This essentially removes the limitations on file size, modification time,
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and device numbers.
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.Pp
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The first tar program appeared in Sixth Edition Unix (circa 1976).
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This makes the tar format one of the oldest and most widely-supported
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archive formats.
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The first official standard for the tar file format was the
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.Dq ustar
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(Unix Standard Tar) format defined by POSIX in 1988.
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POSIX.1-2001 extended the ustar format to create the
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.Dq pax interchange
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format.
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There have also been many custom variations.
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.Ss Cpio Formats
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The libarchive library can read a number of common cpio variants and can write
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.Dq odc
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format archives.
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A cpio archive stores each entry as a fixed-size header followed
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by a variable-length filename and variable-length data.
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Unlike tar, cpio does only minimal padding of the header or file data.
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There are a variety of cpio formats, which differ primarily in
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how they store the initial header: some store the values as
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octal or hexadecimal numbers in ASCII, others as binary values of
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varying byte order and length.
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.Bl -tag -width indent
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.It Cm binary
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The libarchive library can read both big-endian and little-endian
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variants of the original binary cpio format.
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This format used 32-bit binary values for file size and mtime,
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and 16-bit binary values for the other fields.
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.It Cm odc
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The libarchive library can both read and write this
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POSIX-standard format.
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This format stores the header contents as octal values in ASCII.
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It is standard, portable, and immune from byte-order confusion.
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File sizes and mtime are limited to 33 bits (8GB file size),
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other fields are limited to 18 bits.
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.It Cm SVR4
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The libarchive library can read both CRC and non-CRC variants of
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this format.
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The SVR4 format uses eight-digit hexadecimal values for
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all header fields.
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This limits file size to 4GB, and also limits the mtime and
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other fields to 32 bits.
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The SVR4 format can optionally include a CRC of the file
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contents, although libarchive does not currently verify this CRC.
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.El
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.Pp
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Cpio is an old format that was widely used because of it's simplicity
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and it's support for very long filenames.
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Unfortunately, it has many limitations that make it unsuitable
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for widespread use.
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Only the POSIX format permits files over 4GB, and its 18-bit
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limit for most other fields makes it unsuitable for modern systems.
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In addition, cpio formats only store numeric UID/GID values (not
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usernames and group names), which can make it very difficult to correctly
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transfer archives across systems.
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Finally, there is no good way to extend the format, which means that
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ACLs, file flags, character encoding information, and non-standard file
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types can not be added except by breaking compatibility with existing
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implementations.
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.Ss Shar Formats
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A
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.Dq shell archive
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is a shell script that, when executed on a POSIX-compliant
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system, will recreate a collection of filesystem objects.
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The libarchive library can write two different kinds of shar archives:
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.Bl -tag -width indent
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.It Cm shar
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The traditional shar format uses a limited set of POSIX
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commands, including
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.Xr echo 1 ,
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.Xr mkdir 1 ,
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and
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.Xr sed 1 .
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It is suitable for portably archiving small collections of plain text files.
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However, it is not generally well-suited for large archives
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(many implementations of
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.Xr sh 1
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have limits on the size of a script) nor should it be used with non-text files.
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.It Cm shardump
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This format is similar to shar but encodes files using
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.Xr uuencode 1
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so that the result will be a plain text file regardless of the file contents.
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It also includes additional shell commands that attempt to reproduce as
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many file attributes as possible, including owner, mode, and flags.
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The additional commands used to restore file attributes make
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shardump archives less portable than plain shar archives.
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.El
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.Sh SEE ALSO
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.Xr tar 1 ,
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.Xr cpio 1 ,
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.Xr shar 1 ,
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.Xr tar 5 .
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