Provided by: libarchive-dev_3.4.0-2ubuntu1.4_amd64 
NAME
libarchive-formats — archive formats supported by the libarchive library
DESCRIPTION
The libarchive(3) library reads and writes a variety of streaming archive formats.
Generally speaking, all of these archive formats consist of a series of “entries”. Each
entry stores a single file system object, such as a file, directory, or symbolic link.
The following provides a brief description of each format supported by libarchive, with some
information about recognized extensions or limitations of the current library support. Note
that just because a format is supported by libarchive does not imply that a program that
uses libarchive will support that format. Applications that use libarchive specify which
formats they wish to support, though many programs do use libarchive convenience functions
to enable all supported formats.
Tar Formats
The libarchive(3) library can read most tar archives. It can write POSIX-standard “ustar”
and “pax interchange” formats as well as v7 tar format and a subset of the legacy GNU tar
format.
All tar formats store each entry in one or more 512-byte records. The first record is used
for file metadata, including filename, timestamp, and mode information, and the file data is
stored in subsequent records. Later variants have extended this by either appropriating
undefined areas of the header record, extending the header to multiple records, or by
storing special entries that modify the interpretation of subsequent entries.
gnutar The libarchive(3) library can read most GNU-format tar archives. It currently
supports the most popular GNU extensions, including modern long filename and
linkname support, as well as atime and ctime data. The libarchive library does not
support multi-volume archives, nor the old GNU long filename format. It can read
GNU sparse file entries, including the new POSIX-based formats.
The libarchive(3) library can write GNU tar format, including long filename and
linkname support, as well as atime and ctime data.
pax The libarchive(3) library can read and write POSIX-compliant pax interchange format
archives. Pax interchange format archives are an extension of the older ustar
format that adds a separate entry with additional attributes stored as key/value
pairs immediately before each regular entry. The presence of these additional
entries is the only difference between pax interchange format and the older ustar
format. The extended attributes are of unlimited length and are stored as UTF-8
Unicode strings. Keywords defined in the standard are in all lowercase; vendors are
allowed to define custom keys by preceding them with the vendor name in all
uppercase. When writing pax archives, libarchive uses many of the SCHILY keys
defined by Joerg Schilling's “star” archiver and a few LIBARCHIVE keys. The
libarchive library can read most of the SCHILY keys and most of the GNU keys
introduced by GNU tar. It silently ignores any keywords that it does not
understand.
The pax interchange format converts filenames to Unicode and stores them using the
UTF-8 encoding. Prior to libarchive 3.0, libarchive erroneously assumed that the
system wide-character routines natively supported Unicode. This caused it to mis-
handle non-ASCII filenames on systems that did not satisfy this assumption.
restricted pax
The libarchive library can also write pax archives in which it attempts to suppress
the extended attributes entry whenever possible. The result will be identical to a
ustar archive unless the extended attributes entry is required to store a long file
name, long linkname, extended ACL, file flags, or if any of the standard ustar data
(user name, group name, UID, GID, etc) cannot be fully represented in the ustar
header. In all cases, the result can be dearchived by any program that can read
POSIX-compliant pax interchange format archives. Programs that correctly read ustar
format (see below) will also be able to read this format; any extended attributes
will be extracted as separate files stored in PaxHeader directories.
ustar The libarchive library can both read and write this format. This format has the
following limitations:
• Device major and minor numbers are limited to 21 bits. Nodes with larger
numbers will not be added to the archive.
• Path names in the archive are limited to 255 bytes. (Shorter if there is no /
character in exactly the right place.)
• Symbolic links and hard links are stored in the archive with the name of the
referenced file. This name is limited to 100 bytes.
• Extended attributes, file flags, and other extended security information cannot
be stored.
• Archive entries are limited to 8 gigabytes in size.
Note that the pax interchange format has none of these restrictions. The ustar
format is old and widely supported. It is recommended when compatibility is the
primary concern.
v7 The libarchive library can read and write the legacy v7 tar format. This format has
the following limitations:
• Only regular files, directories, and symbolic links can be archived. Block and
character device nodes, FIFOs, and sockets cannot be archived.
• Path names in the archive are limited to 100 bytes.
• Symbolic links and hard links are stored in the archive with the name of the
referenced file. This name is limited to 100 bytes.
• User and group information are stored as numeric IDs; there is no provision for
storing user or group names.
• Extended attributes, file flags, and other extended security information cannot
be stored.
• Archive entries are limited to 8 gigabytes in size.
Generally, users should prefer the ustar format for portability as the v7 tar format
is both less useful and less portable.
The libarchive library also reads a variety of commonly-used extensions to the basic tar
format. These extensions are recognized automatically whenever they appear.
Numeric extensions.
The POSIX standards require fixed-length numeric fields to be written with some
character position reserved for terminators. Libarchive allows these fields to be
written without terminator characters. This extends the allowable range; in
particular, ustar archives with this extension can support entries up to 64
gigabytes in size. Libarchive also recognizes base-256 values in most numeric
fields. This essentially removes all limitations on file size, modification time,
and device numbers.
Solaris extensions
Libarchive recognizes ACL and extended attribute records written by Solaris tar.
The first tar program appeared in Seventh Edition Unix in 1979. The first official standard
for the tar file format was the “ustar” (Unix Standard Tar) format defined by POSIX in 1988.
POSIX.1-2001 extended the ustar format to create the “pax interchange” format.
Cpio Formats
The libarchive library can read a number of common cpio variants and can write “odc” and
“newc” format archives. A cpio archive stores each entry as a fixed-size header followed by
a variable-length filename and variable-length data. Unlike the tar format, the cpio format
does only minimal padding of the header or file data. There are several cpio variants,
which differ primarily in how they store the initial header: some store the values as octal
or hexadecimal numbers in ASCII, others as binary values of varying byte order and length.
binary The libarchive library transparently reads both big-endian and little-endian
variants of the original binary cpio format. This format used 32-bit binary values
for file size and mtime, and 16-bit binary values for the other fields.
odc The libarchive library can both read and write this POSIX-standard format, which is
officially known as the “cpio interchange format” or the “octet-oriented cpio
archive format” and sometimes unofficially referred to as the “old character
format”. This format stores the header contents as octal values in ASCII. It is
standard, portable, and immune from byte-order confusion. File sizes and mtime are
limited to 33 bits (8GB file size), other fields are limited to 18 bits.
SVR4/newc
The libarchive library can read both CRC and non-CRC variants of this format. The
SVR4 format uses eight-digit hexadecimal values for all header fields. This limits
file size to 4GB, and also limits the mtime and other fields to 32 bits. The SVR4
format can optionally include a CRC of the file contents, although libarchive does
not currently verify this CRC.
Cpio first appeared in PWB/UNIX 1.0, which was released within AT&T in 1977. PWB/UNIX 1.0
formed the basis of System III Unix, released outside of AT&T in 1981. This makes cpio
older than tar, although cpio was not included in Version 7 AT&T Unix. As a result, the tar
command became much better known in universities and research groups that used Version 7.
The combination of the find and cpio utilities provided very precise control over file
selection. Unfortunately, the format has many limitations that make it unsuitable for
widespread use. Only the POSIX format permits files over 4GB, and its 18-bit limit for most
other fields makes it unsuitable for modern systems. In addition, cpio formats only store
numeric UID/GID values (not usernames and group names), which can make it very difficult to
correctly transfer archives across systems with dissimilar user numbering.
Shar Formats
A “shell archive” is a shell script that, when executed on a POSIX-compliant system, will
recreate a collection of file system objects. The libarchive library can write two
different kinds of shar archives:
shar The traditional shar format uses a limited set of POSIX commands, including echo(1),
mkdir(1), and sed(1). It is suitable for portably archiving small collections of
plain text files. However, it is not generally well-suited for large archives (many
implementations of sh(1) have limits on the size of a script) nor should it be used
with non-text files.
shardump
This format is similar to shar but encodes files using uuencode(1) so that the
result will be a plain text file regardless of the file contents. It also includes
additional shell commands that attempt to reproduce as many file attributes as
possible, including owner, mode, and flags. The additional commands used to restore
file attributes make shardump archives less portable than plain shar archives.
ISO9660 format
Libarchive can read and extract from files containing ISO9660-compliant CDROM images. In
many cases, this can remove the need to burn a physical CDROM just in order to read the
files contained in an ISO9660 image. It also avoids security and complexity issues that
come with virtual mounts and loopback devices. Libarchive supports the most common
Rockridge extensions and has partial support for Joliet extensions. If both extensions are
present, the Joliet extensions will be used and the Rockridge extensions will be ignored.
In particular, this can create problems with hardlinks and symlinks, which are supported by
Rockridge but not by Joliet.
Libarchive reads ISO9660 images using a streaming strategy. This allows it to read
compressed images directly (decompressing on the fly) and allows it to read images directly
from network sockets, pipes, and other non-seekable data sources. This strategy works well
for optimized ISO9660 images created by many popular programs. Such programs collect all
directory information at the beginning of the ISO9660 image so it can be read from a
physical disk with a minimum of seeking. However, not all ISO9660 images can be read in
this fashion.
Libarchive can also write ISO9660 images. Such images are fully optimized with the
directory information preceding all file data. This is done by storing all file data to a
temporary file while collecting directory information in memory. When the image is
finished, libarchive writes out the directory structure followed by the file data. The
location used for the temporary file can be changed by the usual environment variables.
Zip format
Libarchive can read and write zip format archives that have uncompressed entries and entries
compressed with the “deflate” algorithm. Other zip compression algorithms are not
supported. It can extract jar archives, archives that use Zip64 extensions and self-
extracting zip archives. Libarchive can use either of two different strategies for reading
Zip archives: a streaming strategy which is fast and can handle extremely large archives,
and a seeking strategy which can correctly process self-extracting Zip archives and archives
with deleted members or other in-place modifications.
The streaming reader processes Zip archives as they are read. It can read archives of
arbitrary size from tape or network sockets, and can decode Zip archives that have been
separately compressed or encoded. However, self-extracting Zip archives and archives with
certain types of modifications cannot be correctly handled. Such archives require that the
reader first process the Central Directory, which is ordinarily located at the end of a Zip
archive and is thus inaccessible to the streaming reader. If the program using libarchive
has enabled seek support, then libarchive will use this to processes the central directory
first.
In particular, the seeking reader must be used to correctly handle self-extracting archives.
Such archives consist of a program followed by a regular Zip archive. The streaming reader
cannot parse the initial program portion, but the seeking reader starts by reading the
Central Directory from the end of the archive. Similarly, Zip archives that have been
modified in-place can have deleted entries or other garbage data that can only be accurately
detected by first reading the Central Directory.
Archive (library) file format
The Unix archive format (commonly created by the ar(1) archiver) is a general-purpose format
which is used almost exclusively for object files to be read by the link editor ld(1). The
ar format has never been standardised. There are two common variants: the GNU format
derived from SVR4, and the BSD format, which first appeared in 4.4BSD. The two differ
primarily in their handling of filenames longer than 15 characters: the GNU/SVR4 variant
writes a filename table at the beginning of the archive; the BSD format stores each long
filename in an extension area adjacent to the entry. Libarchive can read both extensions,
including archives that may include both types of long filenames. Programs using libarchive
can write GNU/SVR4 format if they provide an entry called // containing a filename table to
be written into the archive before any of the entries. Any entries whose names are not in
the filename table will be written using BSD-style long filenames. This can cause problems
for programs such as GNU ld that do not support the BSD-style long filenames.
mtree
Libarchive can read and write files in mtree(5) format. This format is not a true archive
format, but rather a textual description of a file hierarchy in which each line specifies
the name of a file and provides specific metadata about that file. Libarchive can read all
of the keywords supported by both the NetBSD and FreeBSD versions of mtree(8), although many
of the keywords cannot currently be stored in an archive_entry object. When writing,
libarchive supports use of the archive_write_set_options(3) interface to specify which
keywords should be included in the output. If libarchive was compiled with access to
suitable cryptographic libraries (such as the OpenSSL libraries), it can compute hash
entries such as sha512 or md5 from file data being written to the mtree writer.
When reading an mtree file, libarchive will locate the corresponding files on disk using the
contents keyword if present or the regular filename. If it can locate and open the file on
disk, it will use that to fill in any metadata that is missing from the mtree file and will
read the file contents and return those to the program using libarchive. If it cannot
locate and open the file on disk, libarchive will return an error for any attempt to read
the entry body.
7-Zip
Libarchive can read and write 7-Zip format archives. TODO: Need more information
CAB
Libarchive can read Microsoft Cabinet ( “CAB”) format archives. TODO: Need more
information.
LHA
TODO: Information about libarchive's LHA support
RAR
Libarchive has limited support for reading RAR format archives. Currently, libarchive can
read RARv3 format archives which have been either created uncompressed, or compressed using
any of the compression methods supported by the RARv3 format. Libarchive can also read
self-extracting RAR archives.
Warc
Libarchive can read and write “web archives”. TODO: Need more information
XAR
Libarchive can read and write the XAR format used by many Apple tools. TODO: Need more
information
SEE ALSO
ar(1), cpio(1), mkisofs(1), shar(1), tar(1), zip(1), zlib(3), cpio(5), mtree(5), tar(5)