.\"	$OpenBSD: tar.1,v 1.67 2024/04/16 23:09:35 jca Exp $
.\"
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.Dd $Mdocdate: April 16 2024 $
.Dt TAR 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm tar
.Nd tape archiver
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm tar
.Sm off
.No { Cm crtux No } Op Cm 014578beFfHhjLmNOoPpqsvwXZz
.Sm on
.Bk -words
.Op Ar blocking-factor | format | archive | replstr
.Op Fl C Ar directory
.Op Fl I Ar file
.Op Ar
.Ek
.Nm tar
.No { Ns Fl crtux Ns }
.Bk -words
.Op Fl 014578eHhjLmNOoPpqvwXZz
.Op Fl b Ar blocking-factor
.Op Fl C Ar directory
.Op Fl F Ar format
.Op Fl f Ar archive
.Op Fl I Ar file
.Op Fl s Ar replstr
.Op Ar
.Ek
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
command creates, adds files to, or extracts files from an
archive file in
.Dq 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.
.Pp
In the first (legacy) form, all option flags except for
.Fl C
and
.Fl I
must be contained within the first argument to
.Nm
and must not be prefixed by a hyphen
.Pq Sq - .
Option arguments, if any, are processed as subsequent arguments to
.Nm
and are processed in the order in which their corresponding option
flags have been presented on the command line.
.Pp
In the second and preferred form, option flags may be given in any order
and are immediately followed by their corresponding option argument
values.
.Pp
One of the following flags must be present:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl c
Create new archive, or overwrite an existing archive,
adding the specified files to it.
.It Fl 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.
.It Fl t
List contents of archive.
If any files are named on the
command line, only those files will be listed.
The
.Ar file
arguments may be specified as glob patterns (see
.Xr glob 7
for more information), in which case
.Nm
will list all archive members that match each pattern.
.It Fl u
Alias for
.Fl r .
.It Fl x
Extract files from archive.
If any files are named on the
command line, only those files will be extracted from the
archive.
The
.Ar file
arguments may be specified as glob patterns (see
.Xr glob 7
for more information), in which case
.Nm
will extract all archive members that match each pattern.
.Pp
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
.Xr umask 2 .
.El
.Pp
In addition to the flags mentioned above, any of the following
flags may be used:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl b Ar blocking-factor
Set blocking factor to use for the archive.
.Nm
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.
.It Fl C Ar 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.
.It Fl e
Stop after the first error.
.It Fl F Ar format
Specify the output archive format, with the default format being
.Cm pax .
.Nm
currently supports the following formats:
.Bl -tag -width "sv4cpio"
.It Cm bcpio
The old binary cpio format.
The default blocksize for this format is 5120 bytes.
This format is not very portable and should not be used when other formats
are available.
Inode and device information about a file (used for detecting file hard links
by this format), which may be truncated by this format, is detected by
.Nm
and is repaired.
.It Cm cpio
The extended cpio interchange format specified in the
.St -p1003.2
standard.
The default blocksize for this format is 5120 bytes.
Inode and device information about a file (used for detecting file hard links
by this format), which may be truncated by this format, is detected by
.Nm
and is repaired.
.It Cm sv4cpio
The System V release 4 cpio.
The default blocksize for this format is 5120 bytes.
Inode and device information about a file (used for detecting file hard links
by this format), which may be truncated by this format, is detected by
.Nm
and is repaired.
.It Cm sv4crc
The System V release 4 cpio with file CRC checksums.
The default blocksize for this format is 5120 bytes.
Inode and device information about a file (used for detecting file hard links
by this format), which may be truncated by this format, is detected by
.Nm
and is repaired.
.It Cm tar
The old
.Bx
tar format as found in
.Bx 4.3 .
The default blocksize for this format is 10240 bytes.
Pathnames stored by this format must be 100 characters or less in length.
Only regular files, hard links, soft links, and directories
will be archived (other file system types are not supported).
For backwards compatibility with even older tar formats, see the
description for
.Fl o .
.It Cm ustar
The extended tar interchange format specified in the
.St -p1003.2
standard.
The default blocksize for this format is 10240 bytes.
Filenames stored by this format must be 100 characters or less in length;
the total pathname must be 256 characters or less.
.It Cm pax
The pax interchange format specified in the
.St -p1003.1-2001
standard.
The default blocksize for this format is 5120 bytes.
.El
.Pp
.Nm
will detect and report any file that it is unable to store or extract
as the result of any specific archive format restrictions.
The individual archive formats may impose additional restrictions on use.
Typical archive format restrictions include (but are not limited to):
file pathname length, file size, link pathname length, and the type of the
file.
.It Fl f Ar archive
Read from or write to
.Ar archive .
A hyphen
.Pq -
can be used to represent standard input or output.
The default is
.Pa /dev/rst0 .
See also the
.Ev TAPE
environment variable.
.It Fl H
Follow symlinks given on the command line only.
.It Fl 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.
.It Fl I Ar file
This is a positional argument which reads the names of files to
archive or extract from the given file, one per line.
.It Fl j
Compress archive using bzip2.
The bzip2 utility must be installed separately.
.It Fl L
Synonym for the
.Fl h
option.
.It Fl m
Do not preserve modification time.
.It Fl N
Use only the numeric UID and GID values when creating or extracting an
archive.
.It Fl O
Write old-style (non-POSIX) archives.
.It Fl o
Don't write directory information that the older (V7) style
.Nm
is unable to decode.
This implies the
.Fl O
flag.
.It Fl P
Do not strip leading slashes
.Pq Sq /
from pathnames.
The default is to strip leading slashes.
.It Fl p
Preserve user and group ID as well as file mode regardless of
the current
.Xr umask 2 .
The setuid and setgid bits are only preserved if the user and group ID
could be preserved.
Only meaningful in conjunction with the
.Fl x
flag.
.It Fl q
Select the first archive member that matches each
.Ar file
operand.
No more than one archive member is matched for each
.Ar file .
When members of type directory are matched, the file hierarchy rooted at that
directory is also matched.
.It Fl s Ar replstr
Modify the archive member names according to the substitution expression
.Ar replstr ,
using the syntax of the
.Xr ed 1
utility regular expressions.
.Ar file
arguments may be given to restrict the list of archive members to those
specified.
.Pp
The format of these regular expressions is
.Pp
.Dl /old/new/[gp]
.Pp
As in
.Xr ed 1 ,
.Va old
is a basic regular expression (see
.Xr re_format 7 )
and
.Va new
can contain an ampersand
.Pq Ql & ,
.Ql \e Ns Em n
(where
.Em n
is a digit) back-references,
or subexpression matching.
The
.Va old
string may also contain newline characters.
Any non-null character can be used as a delimiter
.Po
.Ql /
is shown here
.Pc .
Multiple
.Fl 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.
.Pp
The optional trailing
.Cm 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
.Cm g
option.
The optional trailing
.Cm p
will cause the final result of a successful substitution to be written to
standard error in the following format:
.Pp
.D1 Em original-pathname No >> Em new-pathname
.Pp
File or archive member names that substitute to the empty string
are not selected and will be skipped.
.It Fl v
Verbose operation mode.
If
.Fl v
is specified multiple times or if the
.Fl t
option is also specified,
.Nm
will use a long format for listing files, similar to
.Xr ls 1
.Fl l .
.It Fl w
Interactively rename files.
This option causes
.Nm
to prompt the user for the filename to use when storing or
extracting files in an archive.
.It Fl X
Do not cross mount points in the file system.
.It Fl Z
Compress archive using
.Xr compress 1 .
.It Fl z
Compress archive using
.Xr gzip 1 .
.El
.Pp
The options
.Op Fl 014578
can be used to select one of the compiled-in backup devices,
.Pa /dev/rstN .
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Ev TMPDIR
Path in which to store temporary files.
.It Ev TAPE
Default tape device to use instead of
.Pa /dev/rst0 .
If set to hyphen
.Pq Sq - ,
standard output is used.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width "/dev/rst0"
.It Pa /dev/rst0
default archive name
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
The
.Nm
utility exits with one of the following values:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width Ds -offset indent -compact
.It 0
All files were processed successfully.
.It 1
An error occurred.
.El
.Sh EXAMPLES
Create an archive on the default tape drive, containing the files named
.Pa bonvole
and
.Pa sekve :
.Pp
.Dl $ tar c bonvole sekve
.Pp
Create a
.Xr gzip 1
compressed archive, called
.Pa foriru.tar.gz ,
containing the files
.Pa bonvole
and
.Pa sekve :
.Pp
.Dl $ tar czf foriru.tar.gz bonvole sekve
.Pp
Verbosely create an archive, called
.Pa backup.tar.gz ,
of all files matching the shell
.Xr glob 7
function
.Pa *.c :
.Pp
.Dl $ tar cvzf backup.tar.gz *.c
.Pp
Verbosely list, but do not extract, all files ending in
.Pa .jpeg
from a compressed archive named
.Pa backup.tar.gz .
Note that the glob pattern has been quoted to avoid expansion by the shell:
.Pp
.Dl $ tar tvzf backup.tar.gz '*.jpeg'
.Pp
Verbosely extract an archive, called
.Pa foo.tar.gz ,
to the directory
.Pa /var/foo :
.Pp
.Dl $ tar xvzf foo.tar.gz -C /var/foo
.Pp
For more detailed examples, see
.Xr pax 1 .
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
Whenever
.Nm
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
.Fl 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
.Nm
cannot create a link to a file,
.Nm
will not create a second copy of the file.
.Pp
If the extraction of a file from an archive is prematurely terminated
by a signal or error,
.Nm
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.
.Pp
If the creation of an archive is prematurely terminated by a signal
or error,
.Nm
may have only partially created the archive, which may violate the
specific archive format specification.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr cpio 1 ,
.Xr pax 1
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
command first appeared in
.At v7 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Keith Muller
at the University of California, San Diego.
.Sh CAVEATS
The
.Fl j
and
.Fl L
flags are not portable to other versions of
.Nm
where they may have a different meaning.