This manual page documents the GNU version of tar, an archiving
program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known
as a tarfile. A tarfile may be made on a tape drive,
however, it is also common to write a tarfile to a normal file.
The first argument to tar must be one of the options Acdrtux,
followed by any optional functions. The final arguments to tar
are the names of the files or directories which should be archived. The
use of a directory name always implies that the subdirectories below
should be included in the archive.
EXAMPLES
tar -xvf foo.tar
verbosely extract foo.tar
tar -xzf foo.tar.gz
extract gzipped foo.tar.gz
tar -cjf foo.tar.bz2 bar/
create bzipped tar archive of the directory bar called foo.tar.bz2
tar -xjf foo.tar.bz2 -C bar/
extract bzipped foo.tar.bz2 after changing directory to bar
tar -xzf foo.tar.gz blah.txt
extract the file blah.txt from foo.tar.gz
FUNCTION LETTERS
One of the following options must be used:
-A, --catenate, --concatenate
append tar files to an archive
-c, --create
create a new archive
-d, --diff, --compare
find differences between archive and file system
-r, --append
append files to the end of an archive
-t, --list
list the contents of an archive
-u, --update
only append files that are newer than the existing in archive
-x, --extract, --get
extract files from an archive
--delete
delete from the archive (not for use on mag tapes!)
COMMON OPTIONS
-C, --directory DIR
change to directory DIR
-f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F
use archive file or device F (default "-", meaning stdin/stdout)
-j, --bzip2
filter archive through bzip2, use to decompress .bz2 files
-p, --preserve-permissions
extract all protection information
-v, --verbose
verbosely list files processed
-z, --gzip, --ungzip
filter the archive through gzip
ALL OPTIONS
--atime-preserve
don't change access times on dumped files
-b, --blocking-factor N
block size of Nx512 bytes (default N=20)
-B, --read-full-blocks
reblock as we read (for reading 4.2BSD pipes)
--backup BACKUP-TYPE
backup files instead of deleting them using BACKUP-TYPE simple or
numbered
--block-compress
block the output of compression program for tapes
-C, --directory DIR
change to directory DIR
--check-links
warn if number of hard links to the file on the filesystem mismatch the
number of links recorded in the archive
--checkpoint
print directory names while reading the archive
-f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F
use archive file or device F (default "-", meaning stdin/stdout)
-F, --info-script F --new-volume-script F
run script at end of each tape (implies --multi-volume)
--force-local
archive file is local even if has a colon
--format FORMAT
selects output archive format
v7 - Unix V7
oldgnu - GNU tar <=1.12
gnu - GNU tar 1.13
ustar - POSIX.1-1988
posix - POSIX.1-2001
-g, --listed-incremental F
create/list/extract new GNU-format incremental backup
-G, --incremental
create/list/extract old GNU-format incremental backup
-h, --dereference
don't dump symlinks; dump the files they point to
--help
like this manpage, but not as cool
-i, --ignore-zeros
ignore blocks of zeros in archive (normally mean EOF)
--ignore-case
ignore case when excluding files
--ignore-failed-read
don't exit with non-zero status on unreadable files
--index-file FILE
send verbose output to FILE instead of stdout
-j, --bzip2
filter archive through bzip2, use to decompress .bz2 files
-k, --keep-old-files
keep existing files; don't overwrite them from archive
-K, --starting-file F
begin at file F in the archive
--keep-newer-files
do not overwrite files which are newer than the archive
-l, --one-file-system
stay in local file system when creating an archive
-L, --tape-length N
change tapes after writing N*1024 bytes
-m, --touch, --modification-time
don't extract file modified time
-M, --multi-volume
create/list/extract multi-volume archive
--mode PERMISSIONS
apply PERMISSIONS while adding files (see chmod(1))
-N, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE
only store files newer than DATE
--newer-mtime DATE
like --newer, but with a DATE
--no-anchored
match any subsequenceof the name's components with --exclude
--no-ignore-case
use case-sensitive matching with --exclude
--no-recursion
don't recurse into directories
--no-same-permissions
apply user's umask when extracting files instead of recorded permissions
like --format=v7; -o exhibits this behavior when creating an
archive (deprecated behavior)
-o, --no-same-owner
do not attempt to restore ownership when extracting; -o exhibits
this behavior when extracting an archive
-O, --to-stdout
extract files to standard output
--occurrence NUM
process only NUM occurrences of each named file; used with
--delete, --diff, --extract, or --list
--overwrite
overwrite existing files and directory metadata when extracting
--overwrite-dir
overwrite directory metadata when extracting
--owner USER
change owner of extraced files to USER
-p, --same-permissions, --preserve-permissions
extract all protection information
-P, --absolute-names
don't strip leading `/'s from file names
--pax-option KEYWORD-LIST
used only with POSIX.1-2001 archives to modify the way tar handles
extended header keywords
--posix
like --format=posix
--preserve
like --preserve-permissions--same-order
--acls
this option causes tar to store each file's ACLs in the archive.
--selinux
this option causes tar to store each file's SELinux security context information in the archive.
--xattrs
this option causes tar to store each file's extended attributes in the archive. This option also enables --acls and--selinux if they haven't been set already, due to the fact that the data for those are stored in special xattrs.
--no-acls
This option causes tar not to store each file's ACLs in the archive and not to extract any ACL information in an archive.
--no-selinux
this option causes tar not to store each file's SELinux security context information in the archive and not to extract any SELinux information in an archive.
--no-xattrs
this option causes tar not to store each file's extended attributes in the archive and not to extract any extended attributes in an archive. This option also enables --no-acls and --no-selinux if they haven't been set already.
-R, --record-number
show record number within archive with each message
--record-size SIZE
use SIZE bytes per record when accessing archives
--recursion
recurse into directories
--recursive-unlink
remove existing directories before extracting directories of the same name
use SUFFIX instead of default '~' when backing up files
-T, --files-from F
get names to extract or create from file F
--totals
print total bytes written with --create
-U, --unlink-first
remove existing files before extracting files of the same name
--use-compress-program PROG
access the archive through PROG which is generally a compression program
--utc
display file modification dates in UTC
-v, --verbose
verbosely list files processed
-V, --label NAME
create archive with volume name NAME
--version
print tar program version number
--volno-file F
keep track of which volume of a multi-volume archive its working in
FILE; used with --multi-volume
-w, --interactive, --confirmation
ask for confirmation for every action
-W, --verify
attempt to verify the archive after writing it
--wildcards
use wildcards with --exclude
--wildcards-match-slash
wildcards match slashes (/) with --exclude
--exclude PATTERN
exclude files based upon PATTERN
-X, --exclude-from FILE
exclude files listed in FILE
-Z, --compress, --uncompress
filter the archive through compress
-z, --gzip, --gunzip, --ungzip
filter the archive through gzip
--use-compress-program PROG
filter the archive through PROG (which must accept -d)
-[0-7][lmh]
specify drive and density
BUGS
The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents instead.
The maintainer of tar falls into this category. Thus this man page may
not be complete, nor current, and was included in the Red Hat CVS tree
because man is a great tool :). This man page was first taken from Debian
Linux and has since been loving updated here.
