GNU tar: an archiver tool

FTP release, version 1.13, 15 September 1999

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Some Definitions
  • 1.2 What tar Does
  • 1.3 How tar Archives are Named
  • 1.4 POSIX Compliance
  • 1.5 GNU tar Authors
  • 1.6 Reporting bugs or suggestions
• 2. Tutorial Introduction to tar
  • 2.1 Basic tar Operations and Options
  • 2.2 The Three Most Frequently Used Operations
  • 2.3 Two Frequently Used Options
    • The `--file' Option
    • The `--verbose' Option
    • Getting Help: Using the --help Option
  • 2.4 How to Create Archives
    • 2.4.1 Preparing a Practice Directory for Examples
    • 2.4.2 Creating the Archive
    • 2.4.3 Running `--create' with `--verbose'
    • 2.4.4 Short Forms with `create'
    • 2.4.5 Archiving Directories
  • 2.5 How to List Archives
    • Listing the Contents of a Stored Directory
  • 2.6 How to Extract Members from an Archive
    • 2.6.1 Extracting an Entire Archive
    • 2.6.2 Extracting Specific Files
    • 2.6.3 Extracting Files that are Directories
    • 2.6.4 Commands That Will Fail
  • 2.7 Going Further Ahead in this Manual
• 3. Invoking GNU tar
  • 3.1 General Synopsis of tar
  • 3.2 Using tar Options
  • 3.3 The Three Option Styles
    • 3.3.1 Mnemonic Option Style
    • 3.3.2 Short Option Style
    • 3.3.3 Old Option Style
    • 3.3.4 Mixing Option Styles
  • 3.4 All tar Options
    • 3.4.1 Operations
    • 3.4.2 tar Options
    • 3.4.3 Short Options Cross Reference
  • 3.5 GNU tar documentation
  • 3.6 Checking tar progress
  • 3.7 Asking for Confirmation During Operations
• 4. GNU tar Operations
  • 4.1 Basic GNU tar Operations
  • 4.2 Advanced GNU tar Operations
    • 4.2.1 The Five Advanced tar Operations
    • 4.2.2 How to Add Files to Existing Archives: --append
      • 4.2.2.1 Appending Files to an Archive
      • 4.2.2.2 Multiple Files with the Same Name
    • 4.2.3 Updating an Archive
      • 4.2.3.1 How to Update an Archive Using --update
    • 4.2.4 Combining Archives with --concatenate
    • 4.2.5 Removing Archive Members Using `--delete'
    • 4.2.6 Comparing Archive Members with the File System
  • 4.3 Options Used by --extract
    • 4.3.1 Options to Help Read Archives
      • Reading Full Records
      • Ignoring Blocks of Zeros
      • Ignore Fail Read
    • 4.3.2 Changing How tar Writes Files
      • Options to Prevent Overwriting Files
      • Keep Old Files
      • Unlink First
      • Recursive Unlink
      • Setting Modification Times
      • Setting Access Permissions
      • Writing to Standard Output
      • Removing Files
    • 4.3.3 Coping with Scarce Resources
      • Starting File
      • Same Order
  • 4.4 Backup options
  • 4.5 Notable tar Usages
  • 4.6 Looking Ahead: The Rest of this Manual
• 5. Performing Backups and Restoring Files
  • 5.1 Using tar to Perform Full Dumps
  • 5.2 Using tar to Perform Incremental Dumps
  • 5.3 The Incremental Options
  • 5.4 Levels of Backups
  • 5.5 Setting Parameters for Backups and Restoration
    • 5.5.1 An Example Text of `Backup-specs'
    • 5.5.2 Syntax for `Backup-specs'
  • 5.6 Using the Backup Scripts
  • 5.7 Using the Restore Script
• 6. Choosing Files and Names for tar
  • 6.1 Choosing and Naming Archive Files
  • 6.2 Selecting Archive Members
  • 6.3 Reading Names from a File
  • 6.4 Excluding Some Files
    • Problems with Using the exclude Options
  • 6.5 Wildcards Patterns and Matching
  • 6.6 Operating Only on New Files
  • 6.7 Descending into Directories
  • 6.8 Crossing Filesystem Boundaries
    • 6.8.1 Changing the Working Directory
    • 6.8.2 Absolute File Names
• 7. Date input formats
  • 7.1 General date syntax
  • 7.2 Calendar date item
  • 7.3 Time of day item
  • 7.4 Timezone item
  • 7.5 Day of week item
  • 7.6 Relative item in date strings
  • 7.7 Pure numbers in date strings
  • 7.8 Authors of getdate
• 8. Controlling the Archive Format
  • 8.1 Making tar Archives More Portable
    • 8.1.1 Portable Names
    • 8.1.2 Symbolic Links
    • 8.1.3 Old V7 Archives
    • 8.1.4 GNU tar and POSIX tar
    • 8.1.5 Checksumming Problems
  • 8.2 Using Less Space through Compression
    • 8.2.1 Creating and Reading Compressed Archives
    • 8.2.2 Archiving Sparse Files
  • 8.3 Handling File Attributes
  • 8.4 The Standard Format
  • 8.5 GNU Extensions to the Archive Format
  • 8.6 Comparison of tar and cpio
• 9. Tapes and Other Archive Media
  • 9.1 Device Selection and Switching
  • 9.2 The Remote Tape Server
  • 9.3 Some Common Problems and their Solutions
  • 9.4 Blocking
    • 9.4.1 Format Variations
    • 9.4.2 The Blocking Factor of an Archive
  • 9.5 Many Archives on One Tape
    • 9.5.1 Tape Positions and Tape Marks
    • 9.5.2 The mt Utility
  • 9.6 Using Multiple Tapes
    • 9.6.1 Archives Longer than One Tape or Disk
    • 9.6.2 Tape Files
  • 9.7 Including a Label in the Archive
  • 9.8 Verifying Data as It is Stored
  • 9.9 Write Protection
• Index

This document was generated on 13 July 2001 using texi2html 1.56k.