pax(1)
pax - portable archive exchange
As shipped in IRIX 6.5.7. Last changed in IRIX 6.5.7.
NAME pax - portable archive exchange SYNOPSIS pax [-cdnv] [-E limit] [-f archive] [-s replstr ] ... [-U user ] ... [-G group ] ... [-T [from_date][,to_date] ] ... [pattern...] pax -r [-cdiknuvDYZ] [-E limit] [-f archive] [-o options ] ... [-p string ] ... [-s replstr ] ... [-U user ] ... [-G group ] ... [-T [from_date][,to_date] ] ... [pattern...] pax -w [-dituvHLPX] [-b blocksize] [[-a] [-f archive]] [-x format] [-B bytes] [-s replstr ] ... [-o options ] ... [-U user ] ... [-G group ] ... [-T [from_date][,to_date]][ /[c][m]]] ... [file...] pax -rw [-diklntuvDHLPXYZ] [-p string ] ... [-s replstr ] ... [-U user ] ... [-G group ] ... [-T [from_date][,to_date][/[c][m]]] ... [file...] directory DESCRIPTION Pax reads and writes archive files which conform to the Archive/Interchange File Format specified in IEEE Std. 1003.1-1988. Pax can also read, but not write, a number of other file formats in addition to those specified in the Archive/Interchange File Format description. Support for these traditional file formats, such as V7 tar and System V binary cpio format archives, is provided for backward compatibility and to maximize portability. Pax will also support traditional cpio and System V tar interfaces if invoked with the name "cpio" or "tar" respectively. See the cpio(1) or tar(1) manual pages for more details. Combinations of the -r and -w command line arguments specify whether pax will read, write or list the contents of the specified archive, or move the specified files to another directory. The command line arguments are: -w writes the contents of the file operands to the standard output in an archive format. If no file operands are specified, a list of files to copy, one per line, will be read from the standard input. A file of type directory will include all of the files in the file hierarchy rooted at the file. -r Pax extracts the members of the archive file read from the standard input, with pathnames matching the specified patterns. If an extracted file is of type directory, the file hierarchy rooted at that file will be extracted as well. The extracted files is created relative to the current file hierarchy. By default, the owner and group of selected files will be that of the invoking process, and the permissions and modification times will be the sames as those in the archive. The supported archive formats are automatically detected on input. The default output format is ustar, but may be overridden by the -x format option described below. -rw Pax copies the file operands to the destination directory. If no file operands are specified, a list of files to copy, one per line, will be read from the standard input. A file of type directory will include all of the files in the file hierarchy rooted at the file. The directory named by the directory operand must exist and have the proper permissions before the copy can occur. If neither the -r or -w options are given, then pax will list the contents of the specified archive. In this mode, pax lists normal files one per line, hard link pathnames as pathname == linkname and symbolic link pathnames (if supported by the implementation) as pathname -> linkname where pathname is the name of the file being extracted, and linkname is the name of a file which appeared earlier in the archive. If the -v option is specified, then pax list normal pathnames in the same format used by the ls utility with the -l option. Hard links are shown as <ls -l listing> == linkname and symbolic links (if supported) are shown as <ls -l listing> -> linkname Pax is capable of reading and writing archives which span multiple physical volumes. Upon detecting an end of medium on an archive which is not yet completed, pax will prompt the user for the next volume of the archive and will allow the user to specify the location of the next volume. Options The following options are available: -a Append files to the end of archive. -b blocksize Block the output at blocksize bytes per write to the archive file. A k suffix multiplies blocking by 1024, a b suffix multiplies blocking by 512 and a m suffix multiplies blocking by 1048576 (1 megabyte). For machines with 16-bit int's (VAXen, XENIX-286, etc.), the maximum buffer size is 32k-1. If not specified, blocksize is automatically determined on input and is ignored for -rw. -c Match all file or archive members except those specified by the pattern or file operands. -d Cause files of type directory being copied or archived or archive members of type directory being extracted to match only the file or archive member itself and not the file hierarchy rooted at the file. -f archive The archive option specifies the pathname of the input or output archive, overriding the default of standard input for -r or standard output for -w. -i Interactively rename files. Substitutions specified by -s options (described below) are performed before requesting the new file name from the user. A file is skipped if an empty line is entered and pax exits with an exit status of 0 if EOF is encountered. -k Prevent the overwriting of existing files. -l Files are linked rather than copied when possible. -n When -r is specified, but -w is not, the pattern arguments are treated as ordinary file names. Only the first occurrence of each of these files in the input archive is read. The pax utility exits with a zero exit status after all files in the list have been read. If one or more files in the list is not found, pax writes a diagnostic to standard error for each of the files and exits with a non-zero exit status. the file names are compared before either the -i, or -s, options are applied. -o options Provide information to the implementation to modify the algorithm for extracting or writing files that is specific to the file format specified by -x. -p string Specify one or more file characteristic options (privileges). The string option-argument must be a string specifying file characteristics to be retained or discarded on extraction. The string consists of the specification characters a, e, m, o and p. Multiple characteristics can be concatenated within the same string and multiple -p options can be specified. The meaning of the specification characters are as follows: a Do not preserve file access times. e Preserve the user ID, group ID, file mode, access time, and modification time. m Do not preserve file modification times. o Preserve the user ID and group ID. p Preserve the file mode bits. In the preceding list, "preserve" indicates that an attribute stored in the archive will be given to the extracted file, subject to the permissions of the invoking process; otherwise, the attribute will be determined as part of the normal file creation action. If neither the e nor the o specification character is specified, or the user ID and group ID are not preserved for any reason, pax will not set the S_ISUID and S_ISGID bits of the file mode. If the preservation of any of these items fails for any reason, pax will write a diagnostic message to standard error. Failure to preserve these items will affect the final exit status, but will not cause the extracted file to be deleted. If file-characteristic letters in any of the string option- arguments are duplicated or conflict with each other, the ones given last will take precedence. For example, if -p eme is specified, file modification times will be preserved. -s replstr File names are modified according to the substitution expression using the syntax of ed(1) as shown: -s /old/new/[gp] Any non null character may be used as a delimiter (a / is used here as an example). Multiple -s expressions may be specified; the expressions are applied in the order specified terminating with the first successful substitution. The optional trailing p causes successful mappings to be listed on standard error. The optional trailing g causes the old expression to be replaced each time it occurs in the source string. Files that substitute to an empty string are ignored both on input and output. -t Cause the access times of the archived files to be the same as they were before being read by pax. -r and standard output for -w. -u Copy each file only if it is newer than a pre-existing file with the same name. This implies -a. -v List file names as they are encountered. Produces a verbose table of contents listing on the standard output when both -r and -w are omitted, otherwise the file names are printed to standard error as they are encountered in the archive. -x format Specifies the output archive format. The input format, which must be one of the following, is automatically determined when the -r option is used. The supported formats are: cpio The extended CPIO interchange format specified in Extended CPIO Format in IEEE Std. 1003.1-1988. ustar The extended TAR interchange format specified in Extended TAR Format in IEEE Std. 1003.1-1988. This is the default archive format. -B bytes Non-standard option on number of bytes written on a single archive volume. -D On extraction check file inode change time before the modification of the file name. Non standard option. -E limit Non-standard limit on read faults 0 indicates stop after first error, values indicate a limit, "NONE" try forever -G group Non-standard option for selecting files within an archive by group (gid or name) -H Follow command line symlinks only. Non standard option. -L Follow symlinks. Non standard option. -P Do NOT follow symlinks (default). -T from_date,to_date Non-standard option for selecting files within an archive by modification time range (lower,upper) -U user Non-standard option for selecting files within an archive by user (uid or name). -X Do not pass over mount points in the file system. Non standard option. -Y On extraction check file inode change time after the modification of the file name. Non standard option. -Z On extraction check modification time after the modification of the file name. Non standard option. When writing to an archive, the standard input is used as a list of pathnames if no pathname operands are specified. The format is one pathname per line. Otherwise, the standard input is the archive file, which is formatted according to one of the specifications in Archive/Interchange File format in IEEE Std. 1003.1-1988, or some other implementation-defined format. The user ID and group ID of the process, together with the appropriate privileges, affect the ability of pax to restore ownership and permissions attributes of the archived files. (See format-reading utility in Archive/Interchange File Format in IEEE Std. 1003.1-1988.) Operands The following operands are available: directory The destination directory pathname for copies when both the -r and -w options are specified. The directory must exist and be writable before the copy or and error results. file A pathname of a file to be copied or archived. When a directory is named, all of its files and (recursively) subdirectories are copied as well. pattern A pattern is given in the standard shell pattern matching notation. The default if no pattern is specified is *, which selects all files. EXAMPLES The following command pax -w -f /dev/rmt0 . copies the contents of the current directory to tape drive 0. The commands mkdir newdir cd olddir pax -rw . newdir copies the contents of olddir to newdir . The command pax -r -s ',//*usr//*,,' -f pax.out reads the archive pax.out with all files rooted in "/usr" in the archive extracted relative to the current directory. FILES /dev/tty used to prompt the user for information when the -i option are specified. SEE ALSO cpio(1), find(1), tar(1), cpio(5), tar(5) DIAGNOSTICS Pax will terminate immediately, without processing any additional files on the command line or in the archive. EXIT CODES Pax will exit with one of the following values: 0 All files in the archive were processed successfully. >0 Pax aborted due to errors encountered during operation. BUGS Special permissions may be required to copy or extract special files. Device, user ID, and group ID numbers larger than 65535 cause additional header records to be output. These records are ignored by some historical version of cpio(1) and tar(1). The archive formats described in Archive/Interchange File Format have certain restrictions that have been carried over from historical usage. For example, there are restrictions on the length of pathnames stored in the archive. When getting an "ls -l" style listing on tar format archives, link counts are listed as zero since the ustar archive format does not keep link count information. On 16 bit architectures, the largest buffer size is 32k-1. This is due, in part, to using integers in the buffer allocation schemes, however, on many of these machines, it is not possible to allocate blocks of memory larger than 32k. COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 1989 Mark H. Colburn. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice is duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by Mark H. Colburn and sponsored by The USENIX Association. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. AUTHOR Mark H. Colburn Minnetech Consulting, Inc. 117 Mackubin Street, Suite 1 St. Paul, MN 55102 mark@jhereg.MN.ORG Sponsored by The USENIX Association for public distribution.