Provided by: pax_20120606-2+deb7u1_amd64 bug

NAME

     paxtar — tape archiver

SYNOPSIS

     paxtar {crtux}[014578AabefHhJjLmNOoPRSpqsvwXZz] [blocking-factor | archive | replstr]
            [-C directory] [-I file] [file ...]
     paxtar {-crtux} [-014578AaeHhJjLmNOoPpqRSvwXZz] [-b blocking-factor] [-C directory]
            [-f archive] [-I file] [-M flag] [-s replstr] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

     The paxtar command creates, adds files to, or extracts files from an archive file in “tar”
     format.  A tar archive is often stored on a magnetic tape, but can be stored equally well on
     a floppy, CD-ROM, or in a regular disk file.

     In the first (legacy) form, all option flags except for -C and -I must be contained within
     the first argument to paxtar and must not be prefixed by a hyphen (‘-’).  Option arguments,
     if any, are processed as subsequent arguments to paxtar and are processed in the order in
     which their corresponding option flags have been presented on the command line.

     In the second and preferred form, option flags may be given in any order and are immediately
     followed by their corresponding option argument values.

     One of the following flags must be present:

     -c      Create new archive, or overwrite an existing archive, adding the specified files to
             it.

     -r      Append the named new files to existing archive.  Note that this will only work on
             media on which an end-of-file mark can be overwritten.

     -t      List contents of archive.  If any files are named on the command line, only those
             files will be listed.  The file arguments may be specified as glob patterns (see
             glob(3) for more information), in which case paxtar will list all archive members
             that match each pattern.

     -u      Alias for -r.

     -x      Extract files from archive.  If any files are named on the command line, only those
             files will be extracted from the archive.  The file arguments may be specified as
             glob patterns (see glob(3) for more information), in which case paxtar will extract
             all archive members that match each pattern.

             If more than one copy of a file exists in the archive, later copies will overwrite
             earlier copies during extraction.  The file mode and modification time are preserved
             if possible.  The file mode is subject to modification by the umask(2).

     In addition to the flags mentioned above, any of the following flags may be used:

     -A      Write Unix Archiver libraries instead of tape archives.

     -a      Guess the compression utility based on the archive filename.  Inability to guess
             will result in quietly not using any compression.  This option only exists for semi-
             compatibility with GNU tar; it is strongly recommended to archive to stdout and pipe
             into an external compression utility with appropriate arguments instead:

                   tar -cf - foo | xz -2e >foo.txz

     -b blocking-factor
             Set blocking factor to use for the archive.  paxtar uses 512-byte blocks.  The
             default is 20, the maximum is 126.  Archives with a blocking factor larger than 63
             violate the POSIX standard and will not be portable to all systems.

     -C directory
             This is a positional argument which sets the working directory for the following
             files.  When extracting, files will be extracted into the specified directory; when
             creating, the specified files will be matched from the directory.

     -e      Stop after the first error.

     -f archive
             Filename where the archive is stored.  Defaults to /dev/rst0.

     -H      Follow symlinks given on the command line only.

     -h      Follow symbolic links as if they were normal files or directories.  In extract mode
             this means that a directory entry in the archive will not overwrite an existing
             symbolic link, but rather what the link ultimately points to.

     -I file
             This is a positional argument which reads the names of files to archive or extract
             from the given file, one per line.

     -J      Use the xz utility to compress the archive.

     -j      Use the bzip2 utility to compress the archive.

     -L      Synonym for the -h option.

     -M flag
             Configure the archive normaliser.  flag is either a numeric value compatible to
             strtonum(3) which is directly stored in the flags word, or one of the following
             values, optionally prefixed with “no-” to turn them off:

             inodes  0x0001: Serialise inodes, zero device info.
                     (cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc)
             links   0x0002: Store content of hard links only once.
                     (cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc)
             mtime   0x0004: Zero out the file modification time.
                     (ar, cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc, ustar)
             uidgid  0x0008: Set owner to 0:0 (root:wheel).
                     (ar, cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc, ustar)
             verb    0x0010: Debug this option.
             debug   0x0020: Debug file header storage.
             lncp    0x0040: Extract hard links by copy if link fails.
             numid   0x0080: Use only numeric uid and gid values.
                     (ustar)
             gslash  0x0100: Append a slash after directory names.
                     (ustar)
             set     0x0003: Keep ownership and mtime intact.
             dist    0x008B: Clean everything except mtime.
             norm    0x008F: Clean everything.
             root    0x0089: Clean owner and device information.

             This option is only implemented for the ar, cpio, sv4cpio, sv4crc, and ustar file
             format writing routines.

     -m      Do not preserve modification time.

     -N      Same as -M numid.

     -O      If reading, extract files to standard output.
             If writing, write old-style (non-POSIX) archives.

     -o      Don't write directory information that the older (V7) style tar is unable to decode.
             This implies the -O flag.

     -P      Do not strip leading slashes (‘/’) from pathnames.  The default is to strip leading
             slashes.

     -p      Preserve user and group ID as well as file mode regardless of the current umask(2).
             The setuid and setgid bits are only preserved if the user is the superuser.  Only
             meaningful in conjunction with the -x flag.

     -q      Select the first archive member that matches each file operand.  No more than one
             archive member is matched for each file.  When members of type directory are
             matched, the file hierarchy rooted at that directory is also matched.

     -R      Write SysVR4 CPIO files instead of tar or POSIX ustar files.  Serialise inode
             numbers, zero out device information.  The file content of hard links is stored only
             once.

     -S      Write SysVR4 CPIO files with CRC instead of tar or POSIX ustar files.  Serialise
             inode numbers, zero out device information.  The file content of hard links is
             stored only once.

     -s replstr
             Modify the archive member names according to the substitution expression replstr,
             using the syntax of the ed(1) utility regular expressions.  file arguments may be
             given to restrict the list of archive members to those specified.

             The format of these regular expressions is

                   /old/new/[gp]

             As in ed(1), old is a basic regular expression (see re_format(7)) and new can
             contain an ampersand (‘&’), ‘\n’ (where n is a digit) back-references, or
             subexpression matching.  The old string may also contain newline characters.  Any
             non-null character can be used as a delimiter (‘/’ is shown here).  Multiple -s
             expressions can be specified.  The expressions are applied in the order they are
             specified on the command line, terminating with the first successful substitution.

             The optional trailing g continues to apply the substitution expression to the
             pathname substring, which starts with the first character following the end of the
             last successful substitution.  The first unsuccessful substitution stops the
             operation of the g option.  The optional trailing p will cause the final result of a
             successful substitution to be written to standard error in the following format:

                   original-pathname >> new-pathname

             File or archive member names that substitute to the empty string are not selected
             and will be skipped.

     -v      Verbose operation mode.

     -w      Interactively rename files.  This option causes paxtar to prompt the user for the
             filename to use when storing or extracting files in an archive.

     -X      Do not cross mount points in the file system.

     -Z      Use the compress(1) utility to compress the archive.

     -z      Use the gzip(1) utility to compress the archive.

     The options [-014578] can be used to select one of the compiled-in backup devices,
     /dev/rstN.

ENVIRONMENT

     TMPDIR      Path in which to store temporary files.

     TAPE        Default tape device to use instead of /dev/rst0.

FILES

     /dev/rst0  default archive name

EXIT STATUS

     The paxtar utility exits with one of the following values:

           0       All files were processed successfully.
           1       An error occurred.

EXAMPLES

     Create an archive on the default tape drive, containing the files named bonvole and sekve:

           $ paxtar c bonvole sekve

     Output a gzip(1) compressed archive containing the files bonvole and sekve to a file called
     foriru.tar.gz:

           $ paxtar zcf foriru.tar.gz bonvole sekve

     Verbosely create an archive, called backup.tar.gz, of all files matching the shell glob(3)
     function *.c:

           $ paxtar zcvf backup.tar.gz *.c

     Verbosely list, but do not extract, all files ending in .jpeg from a compressed archive
     named backup.tar.gz.  Note that the glob pattern has been quoted to avoid expansion by the
     shell:

           $ paxtar tvzf backup.tar.gz '*.jpeg'

     For more detailed examples, see pax(1).

DIAGNOSTICS

     Whenever paxtar cannot create a file or a link when extracting an archive or cannot find a
     file while writing an archive, or cannot preserve the user ID, group ID, file mode, or
     access and modification times when the -p option is specified, a diagnostic message is
     written to standard error and a non-zero exit value will be returned, but processing will
     continue.  In the case where paxtar cannot create a link to a file, unless -M lncp is given,
     paxtar will not create a second copy of the file.

     If the extraction of a file from an archive is prematurely terminated by a signal or error,
     paxtar may have only partially extracted the file the user wanted.  Additionally, the file
     modes of extracted files and directories may have incorrect file bits, and the modification
     and access times may be wrong.

     If the creation of an archive is prematurely terminated by a signal or error, paxtar may
     have only partially created the archive, which may violate the specific archive format
     specification.

SEE ALSO

     ar(1), cpio(1), pax(1), paxcpio(1), tar(1), deb(5)

HISTORY

     A tar command first appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

AUTHORS

     Keith Muller at the University of California, San Diego.

     MirOS extensions by Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.org>.

CAVEATS

     The flags -AaJjLMNRS are not portable to other implementations of tar where they may have a
     different meaning or not exist at all.

BUGS

     The pax file format is not yet supported.