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User Commands tar(1)
NAME
tar - create tape archives and add or extract files
SYNOPSIS
tar c[BDeEFhilnopPqTvw@[0-7]][bfk][X...] [blocksize] [tar-
file] [size] [exclude-file...] {file | -I include-file |
-C directory file} ...
tar r[BDeEFhilnqTvw@[0-7]][bfk] [blocksize] [tarfile] [size]
{file | -I include-file | -C directory file} ...
tar t[BeFhilnqTv[0-7]][fk][X...] [tarfile] [size] [exclude-
file...] {file | -I include-file} ...
tar u[BDeEFhilnqTvw@[0-7]][bfk] [blocksize] [tarfile] [size]
file...
tar x[BeFhilmnopqTvw[0-7]][fk][X...] [tarfile] [size]
[exclude-file...] [file...]
DESCRIPTION
The tar command archives and extracts files to and from a
single file called a tarfile. A tarfile is usually a mag-
netic tape, but it can be any file. tar's actions are con-
trolled by the key argument. The key is a string of charac-
ters containing exactly one function letter (c, r, t , u, or
x) and zero or more function modifiers (letters or digits),
depending on the function letter used. The key string con-
tains no SPACE characters. Function modifier arguments are
listed on the command line in the same order as their
corresponding function modifiers appear in the key string.
The -I include-file, -C directory file, and file arguments
specify which files or directories are to be archived or
extracted. In all cases, appearance of a directory name
refers to the files and (recursively) subdirectories of that
directory. Arguments appearing within braces ({ }) indicate
that one of the arguments must be specified.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
-C directory file Performs a chdir (see cd(1)) opera-
tion on directory and performs the c
(create) or r (replace) operation on
file. Use short relative path names
for file. If file is ".", archive
all files in directory. This operand
enables archiving files from multi-
ple directories not related by a
close common parent.
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User Commands tar(1)
-I include-file Opens include-file containing a list
of files, one per line, and treats
it as if each file appeared
separately on the command line. Be
careful of trailing white spaces.
Also beware of leading white spaces,
since, for each line in the included
file, the entire line (apart from
the newline) will be used to match
against the initial string of files
to include. In the case where
excluded files (see X function
modifier) are also specified, they
take precedence over all included
files. If a file is specified in
both the exclude-file and the
include-file (or on the command
line), it will be excluded.
file A path name of a regular file or
directory to be archived (when the
c, r or u functions are specified),
extracted (x) or listed (t). When
file is the path name of a direc-
tory, the action applies to all of
the files and (recursively) sub-
directories of that directory.
When a file is archived, and the E
flag (see Function Modifiers) is not
specified, the filename cannot
exceed 256 characters. In addition,
it must be possible to split the
name between parent directory names
so that the prefix is no longer than
155 characters and the name is no
longer than 100 characters. If E is
specified, a name of up to PATH_MAX
characters may be specified.
For example, a file whose basename
is longer than 100 characters could
not be archived without using the E
flag. A file whose directory portion
is 200 characters and whose basename
is 50 characters could be archived
(without using E) if a slash appears
in the directory name somewhere in
character positions 151-156.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 2
User Commands tar(1)
Function Letters
The function portion of the key is specified by one of the
following letters:
c Create. Writing begins at the beginning of the tar-
file, instead of at the end.
r Replace. The named files are written at the end of
the tarfile. A file created with extended headers
must be updated with extended headers (see E flag
under Function Modifiers). A file created without
extended headers cannot be modified with extended
headers.
t Table of Contents. The names of the specified files
are listed each time they occur in the tarfile. If
no file argument is given, the names of all files
and any associated extended attributes in the tar-
file are listed. With the v function modifier,
additional information for the specified files is
displayed.
u Update. The named files are written at the end of
the tarfile if they are not already in the tarfile,
or if they have been modified since last written to
that tarfile. An update can be rather slow. A tar-
file created on a 5.x system cannot be updated on a
4.x system. A file created with extended headers
must be updated with extended headers (see E flag
under Function Modifiers). A file created without
extended headers cannot be modified with extended
headers.
x Extract or restore. The named files are extracted
from the tarfile and written to the directory
specified in the tarfile, relative to the current
directory. Use the relative path names of files and
directories to be extracted.
Absolute path names contained in the tar archive
are unpacked using the absolute path names, that
is, the leading forward slash (/) is not stripped
off.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 3
User Commands tar(1)
If a named file matches a directory whose contents
has been written to the tarfile, this directory is
recursively extracted. The owner, modification
time, and mode are restored (if possible); other-
wise, to restore owner, you must be the super-user.
Character-special and block-special devices
(created by mknod(1M)) can only be extracted by the
super-user. If no file argument is given, the
entire content of the tarfile is extracted. If the
tarfile contains several files with the same name,
each file is written to the appropriate directory,
overwriting the previous one. Filename substitution
wildcards cannot be used for extracting files from
the archive. Rather, use a command of the form:
tar xvf ... /dev/rmt/0 `tar tf ... /dev/rmt/0 | \
grep 'pattern' `
When extracting tapes created with the r or u functions,
directory modification times may not be set correctly. These
same functions cannot be used with many tape drives due to
tape drive limitations such as the absence of backspace or
append capabilities.
When using the r, u, or x functions or the X function modif-
ier, the named files must match exactly the corresponding
files in the tarfile. For example, to extract ./thisfile,
you must specify ./thisfile, and not thisfile. The t func-
tion displays how each file was archived.
Function Modifiers
The characters below may be used in conjunction with the
letter that selects the desired function.
b blocksize Blocking Factor. Use when reading or writing
to raw magnetic archives (see f below). The
blocksize argument specifies the number of
512-byte tape blocks to be included in each
read or write operation performed on the
tarfile. The minimum is 1, the default is
20. The maximum value is a function of the
amount of memory available and the blocking
requirements of the specific tape device
involved (see mtio(7I) for details.) The
maximum cannot exceed INT_MAX/512 (4194303).
When a tape archive is being read, its
actual blocking factor will be automatically
detected, provided that it is less than or
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 4
User Commands tar(1)
equal to the nominal blocking factor (the
value of the blocksize argument, or the
default value if the b modifier is not
specified). If the actual blocking factor
is greater than the nominal blocking factor,
a read error will result. See Example 5 in
EXAMPLES.
B Block. Force tar to perform multiple reads
(if necessary) to read exactly enough bytes
to fill a block. This function modifier
enables tar to work across the Ethernet,
since pipes and sockets return partial
blocks even when more data is coming. When
reading from standard input, "-", this func-
tion modifier is selected by default to
ensure that tar can recover from short
reads.
D Data change warnings. Used with c, r, or u
function letters. Ignored with t or x func-
tion letters. If the size of a file changes
while the file is being archived, treat this
condition as a warning instead of as an
error. A warning message will still be writ-
ten, but the exit status is not affected.
e Error. Exit immediately with a positive exit
status if any unexpected errors occur. The
SYSV3 environment variable overrides the
default behavior. (See ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
section below.)
E Write a tarfile with extended headers. (Used
with c, r, or u function letters. Ignored
with t or x function letters.) When a tar-
file is written with extended headers, the
modification time is maintained with a
granularity of microseconds rather than
seconds. In addition, filenames no longer
than PATH_MAX characters that could not be
archived without E, and file sizes greater
than 8GB, are supported. The E flag is
required whenever the larger files and/or
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 5
User Commands tar(1)
files with longer names, or whose UID/GID
exceed 2097151, are to be archived, or if
time granularity of microseconds is desired.
f File. Use the tarfile argument as the name
of the tarfile. If f is specified,
/etc/default/tar is not searched. If f is
omitted, tar will use the device indicated
by the TAPE environment variable, if set.
Otherwise, tar will use the default values
defined in /etc/default/tar. The number
matching the archiveN string is used as the
output device with the blocking and size
specifications from the file. For example,
tar -c 2/tmp/*
writes the output to the device specified as
archive2 in /etc/default/tar.
If the name of the tarfile is "-", tar
writes to the standard output or reads from
the standard input, whichever is appropri-
ate. tar can be used as the head or tail of
a pipeline. tar can also be used to move
hierarchies with the command:
example% cd fromdir; tar cf - .| (cd todir; tar xfBp -)
F With one F argument, tar excludes all direc-
tories named SCCS and RCS from the tarfile.
With two arguments, FF, tar excludes all
directories named SCCS and RCS, all files
with .o as their suffix, and all files named
errs, core, and a.out. The SYSV3 environment
variable overrides the default behavior.
(See ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES section below.)
h Follow symbolic links as if they were normal
files or directories. Normally, tar does not
follow symbolic links.
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User Commands tar(1)
i Ignore directory checksum errors.
k size Requires tar to use the size argument as the
size of an archive in kilobytes. This is
useful when the archive is intended for a
fixed size device such as floppy disks.
Large files are then split across volumes if
they do not fit in the specified size.
l Link. Output error message if unable to
resolve all links to the files being
archived. If l is not specified, no error
messages are printed.
m Modify. The modification time of the file is
the time of extraction. This function modif-
ier is valid only with the x function.
n The file being read is a non-tape device.
Reading of the archive is faster since tar
can randomly seek around the archive.
o Ownership. Assign to extracted files the
user and group identifiers of the user run-
ning the program, rather than those on tar-
file. This is the default behavior for users
other than root. If the o function modifier
is not set and the user is root, the
extracted files will take on the group and
user identifiers of the files on tarfile
(see chown(1) for more information). The o
function modifier is only valid with the x
function.
p Restore the named files to their original
modes, and ACLs if applicable, ignoring the
present umask(1). This is the default
behavior if invoked as super-user with the x
function letter specified. If super-user,
SETUID, and sticky information are also
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 7
User Commands tar(1)
extracted, and files are restored with their
original owners and permissions, rather than
owned by root. When this function modifier
is used with the c function, ACLs are
created in the tarfile along with other
information. Errors will occur when a tar-
file with ACLs is extracted by previous ver-
sions of tar.
P Suppress the addition of a trailing "/" on
directory entries in the archive.
q Stop after extracting the first occurrence
of the named file. tar will normally con-
tinue reading the archive after finding an
occurrence of a file.
T This modifier is only available if the sys-
tem is configured with Trusted Extensions.
When this modifier is used with the function
letter c, r, or u for creating, replacing or
updating a tarfile, the sensitivity label
associated with each archived file and
directory is stored in the tarfile.
Specifying T implies the function modifier
p.
When used with the function letter x for
extracting a tarfile, the tar program veri-
fies that the file's sensitivity label
specified in the archive equals the sensi-
tivity label of the destination directory.
If not, the file is not restored. This
operation must be invoked from the global
zone. If the archived file has a relative
pathname, it is restored to the correspond-
ing directory with the same label, if avail-
able. This is done by prepending to the
current destination directory the root path-
name of the zone whose label equals the
file. If no such zone exists, the file is
not restored.
Limited support is provided for extracting
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 8
User Commands tar(1)
labeled archives from Trusted Solaris 8.
Only sensitivity labels, and multi-level
directory specifications are interpreted.
Privilege specifications and audit attribute
flags are silently ignored. Multilevel
directory specifications including symbolic
links to single level directories are are
mapped into zone-relative pathnames if a
zone with the same label is available. This
support is intended to facilitate migration
of home directories. Architectural differ-
ences preclude the extraction of arbitrarily
labeled files from Trusted Solaris 8 into
identical pathnames in Trusted Extensions.
Files cannot be extracted unless their
archived label matches the destination
label.
v Verbose. Output the name of each file pre-
ceded by the function letter. With the t
function, v provides additional information
about the tarfile entries. The listing is
similar to the format produced by the -l
option of the ls(1) command.
w What. Output the action to be taken and the
name of the file, then await the user's con-
firmation. If the response is affirmative,
the action is performed; otherwise, the
action is not performed. This function
modifier cannot be used with the t function.
X Exclude. Use the exclude-file argument as a
file containing a list of relative path
names for files (or directories) to be
excluded from the tarfile when using the
functions c, x, or t. Be careful of trailing
white spaces. Also beware of leading white
spaces, since, for each line in the excluded
file, the entire line (apart from the new-
line) will be used to match against the ini-
tial string of files to exclude. Lines in
the exclude file are matched exactly, so an
entry like "/var" will not exclude the /var
directory if tar is backing up relative
pathnames. The entry should read "./var"
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 9
User Commands tar(1)
under these circumstances. The tar command
does not expand shell metacharacters in the
exclude file, so specifying entries like
"*.o" will not have the effect of excluding
all files with names suffixed with ".o". If
a complex list of files is to be excluded,
the exclude file should be generated by some
means such as the find(1) command with
appropriate conditions.
Multiple X arguments may be used, with one
exclude-file per argument. In the case where
included files (see -I include-file operand)
are also specified, the excluded files take
precedence over all included files. If a
file is specified in both the exclude-file
and the include-file (or on the command
line), it will be excluded.
@ Include extended attributes in archive. By
default, tar does not place extended attri-
butes in the archive. With this flag, tar
will look for extended attributes on the
files to be placed in the archive and add
them to the archive. Extended attributes go
in the archive as special files with a spe-
cial type label. When this modifier is used
with the x function, extended attributes are
extracted from the tape along with the nor-
mal file data. Extended attribute files can
only be extracted from an archive as part of
a normal file extract. Attempts to expli-
citly extract attribute records are ignored.
[0-7] Select an alternative drive on which the
tape is mounted. The default entries are
specified in /etc/default/tar. If no digit
or f function modifier is specified, the
entry in /etc/default/tar with digit "0" is
the default.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of tar
when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2
**31 bytes).
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 10
User Commands tar(1)
The automatic determination of the actual blocking factor
may be fooled when reading from a pipe or a socket (see the
B function modifier below).
1/4" streaming tape has an inherent blocking factor of one
512-byte block. It can be read or written using any blocking
factor.
This function modifier works for archives on disk files and
block special devices, among others, but is intended princi-
pally for tape devices.
For information on tar header format, see archives(4).
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Creating an archive of your home directory
The following is an example using tar to create an archive
of your home directory on a tape mounted on drive
/dev/rmt/0:
example% cd
example% tar cvf /dev/rmt/0 .
messages from tar
The c function letter means create the archive. The v func-
tion modifier outputs messages explaining what tar is doing.
The f function modifier indicates that the tarfile is being
specified (/dev/rmt/0 in this example). The dot (.) at the
end of the command line indicates the current directory and
is the argument of the f function modifier.
Display the table of contents of the tarfile with the fol-
lowing command:
example% tar tvf /dev/rmt/0
The output will be similar to the following for the POSIX
locale:
rw-r--r-- 1677/40 2123 Nov 7 18:15 1985 ./test.c
...
example%
The columns have the following meanings:
o column 1 is the access permissions to ./test.c
o column 2 is the user-id/group-id of ./test.c
o column 3 is the size of ./test.c in bytes
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 11
User Commands tar(1)
o column 4 is the modification date of ./test.c. When the
LC_TIME category is not set to the POSIX locale, a dif-
ferent format and date order field may be used.
o column 5 is the name of ./test.c
To extract files from the archive:
example% tar xvf /dev/rmt/0
messages from tar
example%
If there are multiple archive files on a tape, each is
separated from the following one by an EOF marker. To have
tar read the first and second archives from a tape with mul-
tiple archives on it, the non-rewinding version of the tape
device name must be used with the f function modifier, as
follows:
example% tar xvfp /dev/rmt/0n read first archive from tape
messages from tar
example% tar xvfp /dev/rmt/0n read second archive from tape
messages from tar
example%
Notice that in some earlier releases, the above scenario did
not work correctly, and intervention with mt(1) between tar
invocations was necessary. To emulate the old behavior, use
the non-rewind device name containing the letter b for BSD
behavior. See the Close Operations section of the mtio(7I)
manual page.
Example 2: Archiving files from /usr/include and from /etc
to default tape drive 0
To archive files from /usr/include and from /etc to default
tape drive 0:
example% tar c -C /usr include -C /etc .
The table of contents from the resulting tarfile would pro-
duce output like the following:
include/
include/a.out.h
and all the other files in /usr/include ...
./chown and all the other files in /etc
To extract all files in the include directory:
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 12
User Commands tar(1)
example% tar xv include
x include/, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks \
and all files under include ...
Example 3: Transferring files across the network
The following is an example using tar to transfer files
across the network. First, here is how to archive files from
the local machine (example) to a tape on a remote system
(host):
example% tar cvfb - 20 files| \
rsh host dd of=/dev/rmt/0 obs=20b
messages from tar
example%
In the example above, we are creating a tarfile with the c
key letter, asking for verbose output from tar with the v
function modifier, specifying the name of the output tarfile
using the f function modifier (the standard output is where
the tarfile appears, as indicated by the `-' sign), and
specifying the blocksize (20) with the b function modifier.
If you want to change the blocksize, you must change the
blocksize arguments both on the tar command and on the dd
command.
Example 4: Retrieving files from a tape on the remote system
back to the local system
The following is an example that uses tar to retrieve files
from a tape on the remote system back to the local system:
example% rsh -n host dd if=/dev/rmt/0 bs=20b | \
tar xvBfb - 20 files
messages from tar
example%
In the example above, we are extracting from the tarfile
with the x key letter, asking for verbose output from tar
with the v function modifier, telling tar it is reading from
a pipe with the B function modifier, specifying the name of
the input tarfile using the f function modifier (the stan-
dard input is where the tarfile appears, as indicated by the
"-" sign), and specifying the blocksize (20) with the b
function modifier.
Example 5: Creating an archive of the home directory
The following example creates an archive of the home direc-
tory on /dev/rmt/0 with an actual blocking factor of 19:
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 13
User Commands tar(1)
example% tar cvfb /dev/rmt/0 19 $HOME
To recognize this archive's actual blocking factor without
using the b function modifier:
example% tar tvf /dev/rmt/0
tar: blocksize = 19
...
To recognize this archive's actual blocking factor using a
larger nominal blocking factor:
example% tar tvf /dev/rmt/0 30
tar: blocksize = 19
...
Attempt to recognize this archive's actual blocking factor
using a nominal blocking factor that is too small:
example% tar tvf /dev/rmt/0 10
tar: tape read error
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
SYSV3 This variable is used to override the
default behavior of tar, provide compatibil-
ity with INTERACTIVE UNIX Systems and SCO
UNIX installation scripts, and should not be
used in new scripts. (It is intended for
compatibility purposes only.) When set, the
following function modifiers behave dif-
ferently:
F filename Uses filename to obtain a
list of command line
switches and files on which
to operate.
e Prevents files from being
split across volumes. If
there is insufficient room
on one volume, tar prompts
for a new volume. If the
file will not fit on the new
volume, tar exits with an
error.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 14
User Commands tar(1)
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of tar: LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, LC_TIME, TZ, and NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/dev/rmt/[0-7][b][n]
/dev/rmt/[0-7]l[b][n]
/dev/rmt/[0-7]m[b][n]
/dev/rmt/[0-7]h[b][n]
/dev/rmt/[0-7]u[b][n]
/dev/rmt/[0-7]c[b][n]
/etc/default/tar Settings may look like this:
archive0=/dev/rmt/0
archive1=/dev/rmt/0n
archive2=/dev/rmt/1
archive3=/dev/rmt/1n
archive4=/dev/rmt/0
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 15
User Commands tar(1)
archive5=/dev/rmt/0n
archive6=/dev/rmt/1
archive7=/dev/rmt/1n
/tmp/tar*
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Stable |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
ar(1), basename(1), cd(1), chown(1), cpio(1), csh(1), dir-
name(1), find(1), ls(1), mt(1), pax(1), setfacl(1),
umask(1), mknod(1M), vold(1M), archives(4), attributes(5),
environ(5), fsattr(5), largefile(5), mtio(7I)
DIAGNOSTICS
Diagnostic messages are output for bad key characters and
tape read/write errors, and for insufficient memory to hold
the link tables.
NOTES
There is no way to access the n-th occurrence of a file.
Tape errors are handled ungracefully.
When the Volume Management daemon is running, accesses to
floppy devices through the conventional device names (for
example, /dev/rdiskette) may not succeed. See vold(1M) for
further details.
The tar archive format allows UIDs and GIDs up to 2097151 to
be stored in the archive header. Files with UIDs and GIDs
greater than this value will be archived with the UID and
GID of 60001.
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 16
User Commands tar(1)
If an archive is created that contains files whose names
were created by processes running in multiple locales, a
single locale that uses a full 8-bit codeset (for example,
the en_US locale) should be used both to create the archive
and to extract files from the archive.
Neither the r function letter nor the u function letter can
be used with quarter-inch archive tapes, since these tape
drives cannot backspace.
Since tar has no options, the standard "--" argument that is
normally used in other utilities to terminate recognition of
options is not needed. If used, it is recognized only as the
first argument and is ignored.
Since -C directory file and -I include-file are multi-
argument operands, any of the following methods can be used
to archive or extract a file named -C or -I:
1. Specify them using file operands containing a / charac-
ter on the command line (such as /home/joe/-C or ./-I).
2. Include them in an include file with -I include-file.
3. Specify the directory in which the file resides:
-C directory -C
or
-C directory -I
4. Specify the entire directory in which the file resides:
-C directory .
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 18 Mar 2006 17
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