NAME

       sqfs2tar - turn a SquashFS image into a tar archive

SYNOPSIS

       sqfs2tar [OPTIONS...] <sqfsfile>

DESCRIPTION

       Quickly  and painlessly turn a SquashFS filesystem image into a tar archive that can then be examined and
       processed by any tool that can work on tar archives. The resulting archive is written to stdout.

       Possible options:

       --root-becomes, -r <dir>
              Prefix all paths in the tarball with the given directory name and add an entry for this  directory
              that  receives  all meta data (permissions, ownership, extended attributes, et cetera) of the root
              inode.

              The special value . can be used since many tar archivers themselves pack  the  attributes  of  the
              root directory that way and naturally support this.

              If this option is not used, all meta data from the root inode IS LOST!

       --subdir, -d <dir>
              Unpack  the given sub directory instead of the filesystem root. Can be specified more than once to
              select multiple directories. If only one is specified, it becomes the  new  root  of  the  archive
              filesystem tree.

       --keep-as-dir, -k
              If  --subdir  is used only once, don't make the subdir the archive root, instead keep it as prefix
              for all unpacked files. Using --subdir more than once implies --keep-as-dir.

       --no-xattr, -X
              Discard extended attributes from the SquashFS image. The default behavior is to  copy  all  xattrs
              attached to SquashFS inodes into the resulting tar archive.

       --no-hard-links, -L
              Normally, sqfs2tar runs hard link detection and generates hard links for entries that refer to the
              same inode. If this flag is set, hard link detection is not performed and duplicate  data  records
              are generated instead.

       --no-skip, -s
              Abort if a file cannot be stored in a tar record instead of skipping it.

       --help, -h
              Print help text and exit.

       --version, -V
              Print version information and exit.

COMPATIBILITY

       The  output  format  is pre-POSIX ustar using GNU extensions where necessary.  Experimentation determined
       that this is most widely supported by activeley used tar implementations (besides  GNU  tar),  even  more
       than the newer POSIX format with PAX extensions.

       If  any file or directory is encountered that cannot be converted, it is skipped and a warning is written
       to stderr. Unless the --no-skip option is set, which aborts processing if a file cannot be converted.

       This is mainly affects socket files which are supported by SquashFS but not by POSIX tar, GNU tar or PAX.

       Since the tar format contains a sequence of files with absolute names, it has no direct concept of a tree
       or an unnamed root node. Consequently, meta data from the SquashFS root inode is lost.

EXAMPLES

       Turn a SquashFS image into a tar archive:

              sqfs2tar rootfs.sqfs > rootfs.tar

       Turn a SquashFS image into a gzip'ed tar archive:

              sqfs2tar rootfs.sqfs | gzip > rootfs.tar.gz

       Turn a SquashFS image into an LZMA2 compressed tar archive:

              sqfs2tar rootfs.sqfs | xz > rootfs.tar.xz

SEE ALSO

       rdsquashfs(1), tar2sqfs(1)

AUTHOR

       Written by David Oberhollenzer.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright    ©    2019   David   Oberhollenzer   License   GPLv3+:   GNU   GPL   version   3   or   later
       <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to  the  extent
       permitted by law.