GNU tar: an archiver tool

FTP release, version 1.13.17, 12 December 1999

GNU tar creates and extracts files from archives.

This manual documents version 1.13.17 of GNU tar.

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
  • 1.1 What this Book Contains
  • 1.2 Some Definitions
  • 1.3 What tar Does
  • 1.4 How tar Archives are Named
  • 1.5 POSIX Compliance
  • 1.6 GNU tar Authors
  • 1.7 Reporting bugs or suggestions
• 2 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
    • The `--file' Option
    • The `--verbose' Option
    • Getting Help: Using the --help Option
  • 2.6 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
  • 2.7 How to List Archives
    • Listing the Contents of a Stored Directory
  • 2.8 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 Commands That Will Fail
  • 2.9 Going Further Ahead in this Manual
• 3 Invoking GNU tar
  • 3.1 General Synopsis of tar
  • 3.2 Using tar Options
  • 3.3 The Three Option Styles
    • 3.3.1 Mnemonic Option Style
    • 3.3.2 Short Option Style
    • 3.3.3 Old Option Style
    • 3.3.4 Mixing Option Styles
  • 3.4 All tar Options
    • 3.4.1 Operations
    • 3.4.2 tar Options
    • 3.4.3 Short Options Cross Reference
  • 3.5 GNU tar documentation
  • 3.6 Checking tar progress
  • 3.7 Asking for Confirmation During Operations
• 4 GNU tar Operations
  • 4.1 Basic GNU tar Operations
  • 4.2 Advanced GNU tar Operations
    • 4.2.1 The Five Advanced tar Operations
    • 4.2.2 The Current State of the Practice Files
    • 4.2.3 How to Add Files to Existing Archives: --append
      • 4.2.3.1 Appending Files to an Archive
      • 4.2.3.2 Multiple Files with the Same Name
    • 4.2.4 Updating an Archive
      • 4.2.4.1 How to Update an Archive Using --update
    • 4.2.5 Combining Archives with --concatenate
    • 4.2.6 Removing Archive Members Using `--delete'
    • 4.2.7 Comparing Archive Members with the File System
  • 4.3 Options Used by --create
    • 4.3.1 Ignore Fail Read
  • 4.4 Options Used by --extract
    • 4.4.1 Options to Help Read Archives
      • Reading Full Records
      • Ignoring Blocks of Zeros
    • 4.4.2 Changing How tar Writes Files
      • Options Controlling the Overwriting of Existing Files
      • Overwrite Old Files
      • Keep Old Files
      • Unlink First
      • Recursive Unlink
      • Setting Modification Times
      • Setting Access Permissions
      • Writing to Standard Output
      • Removing Files
    • 4.4.3 Coping with Scarce Resources
      • Starting File
      • Same Order
  • 4.5 Backup options
  • 4.6 Notable tar Usages
  • 4.7 Looking Ahead: The Rest of this Manual
• 5 Performing Backups and Restoring Files
  • 5.1 Using tar to Perform Full Dumps
  • 5.2 Using tar to Perform Incremental Dumps
  • 5.3 The Incremental Options
  • 5.4 Levels of Backups
  • 5.5 Setting Parameters for Backups and Restoration
    • 5.5.1 An Example Text of `Backup-specs'
    • 5.5.2 Syntax for `Backup-specs'
  • 5.6 Using the Backup Scripts
  • 5.7 Using the Restore Script
• 6 Choosing Files and Names for tar
  • 6.1 Choosing and Naming Archive Files
  • 6.2 Selecting Archive Members
  • 6.3 Reading Names from a File
    • 6.3.1 NUL Terminated File Names
  • 6.4 Excluding Some Files
    • Problems with Using the exclude Options
  • 6.5 Wildcards Patterns and Matching
  • 6.6 Operating Only on New Files
  • 6.7 Descending into Directories
  • 6.8 Crossing Filesystem Boundaries
    • 6.8.1 Changing the Working Directory
    • 6.8.2 Absolute File Names
• 7 Date input formats
  • 7.1 General date syntax
  • 7.2 Calendar date item
  • 7.3 Time of day item
  • 7.4 Time zone item
  • 7.5 Day of week item
  • 7.6 Relative item in date strings
  • 7.7 Pure numbers in date strings
  • 7.8 Authors of getdate
• 8 Controlling the Archive Format
  • 8.1 Making tar Archives More Portable
    • 8.1.1 Portable Names
    • 8.1.2 Symbolic Links
    • 8.1.3 Old V7 Archives
    • 8.1.4 GNU tar and POSIX tar
    • 8.1.5 Checksumming Problems
    • 8.1.6 Large or Negative Values
  • 8.2 Using Less Space through Compression
    • 8.2.1 Creating and Reading Compressed Archives
    • 8.2.2 Archiving Sparse Files
  • 8.3 Handling File Attributes
  • 8.4 The Standard Format
  • 8.5 GNU Extensions to the Archive Format
  • 8.6 Comparison of tar and cpio
• 9 Tapes and Other Archive Media
  • 9.1 Device Selection and Switching
  • 9.2 The Remote Tape Server
  • 9.3 Some Common Problems and their Solutions
  • 9.4 Blocking
    • 9.4.1 Format Variations
    • 9.4.2 The Blocking Factor of an Archive
  • 9.5 Many Archives on One Tape
    • 9.5.1 Tape Positions and Tape Marks
    • 9.5.2 The mt Utility
  • 9.6 Using Multiple Tapes
    • 9.6.1 Archives Longer than One Tape or Disk
    • 9.6.2 Tape Files
  • 9.7 Including a Label in the Archive
  • 9.8 Verifying Data as It is Stored
  • 9.9 Write Protection
• Index

This document was generated on 25 May 2000 using the texi2html translator version 1.51a.