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:

       --compressor, -c <name>
              By  default  the  result  is  a raw, uncompressed tar ball. Using this option it is
              possible to select a stream compression format (such as gzip, xz, zstd or bzip2) to
              use for the output archive.

              Run sqfs2tar --help to get a list of all available compressors.

       --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 archive. For instance, the tar format
              does not support socket files, but SquashFS does. The default behaviour of sqfs2tar
              is  to emit a warning to stderr and skip the entry. If this flag is set, processing
              is aborted and sqfs2tar exits with an error status.

       --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 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, unless the --root-becomes option is used.

       The output archive can optionally  be  compressed.  Default  settings  are  used  for  the
       supported  compressors and there is currently no intention to expose finer grained control
       over them. To set custom compressor flags, create an uncompressed archive and pipe it into
       a dedicated compressor process.

EXAMPLES

       Turn a SquashFS image into a tar archive:

              sqfs2tar rootfs.sqfs > rootfs.tar

       Creating a compressed archive with gzip headers:

              sqfs2tar --compressor gzip rootfs.sqfs > rootfs.tar.gz

       Compressing the output archive, but using custom compressor flags:

              sqfs2tar rootfs.sqfs | xz -9e > 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.