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PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT |
PAX(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual PAX(1P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
pax — portable archive interchange
pax [−dv] [−c|−n] [−H|−L] [−o options] [−f archive] [−s replstr]...
[pattern...]
pax −r[−c|−n] [−dikuv] [−H|−L] [−f archive] [−o options]... [−p string]...
[−s replstr]... [pattern...]
pax −w [−dituvX] [−H|−L] [−b blocksize] [[−a] [−f archive]] [−o options]...
[−s replstr]... [−x format] [file...]
pax −r −w [−diklntuvX] [−H|−L] [−o options]... [−p string]...
[−s replstr]... [file...] directory
The pax utility shall read, write, and write lists of the members of
archive files and copy directory hierarchies. A variety of archive
formats shall be supported; see the −x format option.
The action to be taken depends on the presence of the −r and −w
options. The four combinations of −r and −w are referred to as the
four modes of operation: list, read, write, and copy modes,
corresponding respectively to the four forms shown in the SYNOPSIS
section.
list In list mode (when neither −r nor −w are specified), pax
shall write the names of the members of the archive file
read from the standard input, with pathnames matching the
specified patterns, to standard output. If a named file is
of type directory, the file hierarchy rooted at that file
shall be listed as well.
read In read mode (when −r is specified, but −w is not), pax
shall extract 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 shall be extracted as
well. The extracted files shall be created performing
pathname resolution with the directory in which pax was
invoked as the current working directory.
If an attempt is made to extract a directory when the
directory already exists, this shall not be considered an
error. If an attempt is made to extract a FIFO when the
FIFO already exists, this shall not be considered an error.
The ownership, access, and modification times, and file
mode of the restored files are discussed under the −p
option.
write In write mode (when −w is specified, but −r is not), pax
shall write 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, shall
be read from the standard input and each entry in this list
shall be processed as if it had been a file operand on the
command line. A file of type directory shall include all of
the files in the file hierarchy rooted at the file.
copy In copy mode (when both −r and −w are specified), pax shall
copy the file operands to the destination directory.
If no file operands are specified, a list of files to copy,
one per line, shall be read from the standard input. A file
of type directory shall include all of the files in the
file hierarchy rooted at the file.
The effect of the copy shall be as if the copied files were
written to a pax format archive file and then subsequently
extracted, except that there may be hard links between the
original and the copied files. If the destination directory
is a subdirectory of one of the files to be copied, the
results are unspecified. If the destination directory is a
file of a type not defined by the System Interfaces volume
of POSIX.1‐2008, the results are implementation-defined;
otherwise, it shall be an error for the file named by the
directory operand not to exist, not be writable by the
user, or not be a file of type directory.
In read or copy modes, if intermediate directories are necessary to
extract an archive member, pax shall perform actions equivalent to
the mkdir() function defined in the System Interfaces volume of
POSIX.1‐2008, called with the following arguments:
* The intermediate directory used as the path argument
* The value of the bitwise-inclusive OR of S_IRWXU, S_IRWXG, and
S_IRWXO as the mode argument
If any specified pattern or file operands are not matched by at least
one file or archive member, pax shall write a diagnostic message to
standard error for each one that did not match and exit with a non-
zero exit status.
The archive formats described in the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section
shall be automatically detected on input. The default output archive
format shall be implementation-defined.
A single archive can span multiple files. The pax utility shall
determine, in an implementation-defined manner, what file to read or
write as the next file.
If the selected archive format supports the specification of linked
files, it shall be an error if these files cannot be linked when the
archive is extracted. For archive formats that do not store file
contents with each name that causes a hard link, if the file that
contains the data is not extracted during this pax session, either
the data shall be restored from the original file, or a diagnostic
message shall be displayed with the name of a file that can be used
to extract the data. In traversing directories, pax shall detect
infinite loops; that is, entering a previously visited directory that
is an ancestor of the last file visited. When it detects an infinite
loop, pax shall write a diagnostic message to standard error and
shall terminate.
The pax utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, except that
the order of presentation of the −o, −p, and −s options is
significant.
The following options shall be supported:
−r Read an archive file from standard input.
−w Write files to the standard output in the specified archive
format.
−a Append files to the end of the archive. It is
implementation-defined which devices on the system support
appending. Additional file formats unspecified by this
volume of POSIX.1‐2008 may impose restrictions on
appending.
−b blocksize
Block the output at a positive decimal integer number of
bytes per write to the archive file. Devices and archive
formats may impose restrictions on blocking. Blocking shall
be automatically determined on input. Conforming
applications shall not specify a blocksize value larger
than 32256. Default blocking when creating archives depends
on the archive format. (See the −x option below.)
−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 or listed
to match only the file or archive member itself and not the
file hierarchy rooted at the file.
−f archive
Specify the pathname of the input or output archive,
overriding the default standard input (in list or read
modes) or standard output (write mode).
−H If a symbolic link referencing a file of type directory is
specified on the command line, pax shall archive the file
hierarchy rooted in the file referenced by the link, using
the name of the link as the root of the file hierarchy.
Otherwise, if a symbolic link referencing a file of any
other file type which pax can normally archive is specified
on the command line, then pax shall archive the file
referenced by the link, using the name of the link. The
default behavior, when neither −H or −L are specified,
shall be to archive the symbolic link itself.
−i Interactively rename files or archive members. For each
archive member matching a pattern operand or file matching
a file operand, a prompt shall be written to the file
/dev/tty. The prompt shall contain the name of the file or
archive member, but the format is otherwise unspecified. A
line shall then be read from /dev/tty. If this line is
blank, the file or archive member shall be skipped. If this
line consists of a single period, the file or archive
member shall be processed with no modification to its name.
Otherwise, its name shall be replaced with the contents of
the line. The pax utility shall immediately exit with a
non-zero exit status if end-of-file is encountered when
reading a response or if /dev/tty cannot be opened for
reading and writing.
The results of extracting a hard link to a file that has
been renamed during extraction are unspecified.
−k Prevent the overwriting of existing files.
−l (The letter ell.) In copy mode, hard links shall be made
between the source and destination file hierarchies
whenever possible. If specified in conjunction with −H or
−L, when a symbolic link is encountered, the hard link
created in the destination file hierarchy shall be to the
file referenced by the symbolic link. If specified when
neither −H nor −L is specified, when a symbolic link is
encountered, the implementation shall create a hard link to
the symbolic link in the source file hierarchy or copy the
symbolic link to the destination.
−L If a symbolic link referencing a file of type directory is
specified on the command line or encountered during the
traversal of a file hierarchy, pax shall archive the file
hierarchy rooted in the file referenced by the link, using
the name of the link as the root of the file hierarchy.
Otherwise, if a symbolic link referencing a file of any
other file type which pax can normally archive is specified
on the command line or encountered during the traversal of
a file hierarchy, pax shall archive the file referenced by
the link, using the name of the link. The default behavior,
when neither −H or −L are specified, shall be to archive
the symbolic link itself.
−n Select the first archive member that matches each pattern
operand. No more than one archive member shall be matched
for each pattern (although members of type directory shall
still match the file hierarchy rooted at that file).
−o options
Provide information to the implementation to modify the
algorithm for extracting or writing files. The value of
options shall consist of one or more <comma>-separated
keywords of the form:
keyword[[:]=value][,keyword[[:]=value], ...]
Some keywords apply only to certain file formats, as
indicated with each description. Use of keywords that are
inapplicable to the file format being processed produces
undefined results.
Keywords in the options argument shall be a string that
would be a valid portable filename as described in the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 3.278, Portable
Filename Character Set.
Note: Keywords are not expected to be filenames, merely
to follow the same character composition rules as
portable filenames.
Keywords can be preceded with white space. The value field
shall consist of zero or more characters; within value, the
application shall precede any literal <comma> with a
<backslash>, which shall be ignored, but preserves the
<comma> as part of value. A <comma> as the final
character, or a <comma> followed solely by white space as
the final characters, in options shall be ignored. Multiple
−o options can be specified; if keywords given to these
multiple −o options conflict, the keywords and values
appearing later in command line sequence shall take
precedence and the earlier shall be silently ignored. The
following keyword values of options shall be supported for
the file formats as indicated:
delete=pattern
(Applicable only to the −x pax format.) When used in
write or copy mode, pax shall omit from extended
header records that it produces any keywords matching
the string pattern. When used in read or list mode,
pax shall ignore any keywords matching the string
pattern in the extended header records. In both
cases, matching shall be performed using the pattern
matching notation described in Section 2.13.1,
Patterns Matching a Single Character and Section
2.13.2, Patterns Matching Multiple Characters. For
example:
−o delete=security.*
would suppress security-related information. See pax
Extended Header for extended header record keyword
usage.
When multiple −odelete=pattern options are specified,
the patterns shall be additive; all keywords matching
the specified string patterns shall be omitted from
extended header records that pax produces.
exthdr.name=string
(Applicable only to the −x pax format.) This keyword
allows user control over the name that is written
into the ustar header blocks for the extended header
produced under the circumstances described in pax
Header Block. The name shall be the contents of
string, after the following character substitutions
have been made:
┌──────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ string │ │
│Includes: │ Replaced by: │
├──────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
│%d │ The directory name of the file, │
│ │ equivalent to the result of the │
│ │ dirname utility on the translated │
│ │ pathname. │
│%f │ The filename of the file, equivalent │
│ │ to the result of the basename utility │
│ │ on the translated pathname. │
│%p │ The process ID of the pax process. │
│%% │ A '%' character. │
└──────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘
Any other '%' characters in string produce undefined
results.
If no −o exthdr.name=string is specified, pax shall
use the following default value:
%d/PaxHeaders.%p/%f
globexthdr.name=string
(Applicable only to the −x pax format.) When used in
write or copy mode with the appropriate options, pax
shall create global extended header records with
ustar header blocks that will be treated as regular
files by previous versions of pax. This keyword
allows user control over the name that is written
into the ustar header blocks for global extended
header records. The name shall be the contents of
string, after the following character substitutions
have been made:
┌──────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ string │ │
│Includes: │ Replaced by: │
├──────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
│%n │ An integer that represents the │
│ │ sequence number of the global extended │
│ │ header record in the archive, starting │
│ │ at 1. │
│%p │ The process ID of the pax process. │
│%% │ A '%' character. │
└──────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘
Any other '%' characters in string produce undefined
results.
If no −o globexthdr.name=string is specified, pax
shall use the following default value:
$TMPDIR/GlobalHead.%p.%n
where $TMPDIR represents the value of the TMPDIR
environment variable. If TMPDIR is not set, pax shall
use /tmp.
invalid=action
(Applicable only to the −x pax format.) This keyword
allows user control over the action pax takes upon
encountering values in an extended header record
that, in read or copy mode, are invalid in the
destination hierarchy or, in list mode, cannot be
written in the codeset and current locale of the
implementation. The following are invalid values that
shall be recognized by pax:
-- In read or copy mode, a filename or link name
that contains character encodings invalid in the
destination hierarchy. (For example, the name may
contain embedded NULs.)
-- In read or copy mode, a filename or link name
that is longer than the maximum allowed in the
destination hierarchy (for either a pathname
component or the entire pathname).
-- In list mode, any character string value
(filename, link name, user name, and so on) that
cannot be written in the codeset and current
locale of the implementation.
The following mutually-exclusive values of the action
argument are supported:
binary In write mode, pax shall generate a
hdrcharset=BINARY extended header record
for each file with a filename, link name,
group name, owner name, or any other field
in an extended header record that cannot be
translated to the UTF‐8 codeset, allowing
the archive to contain the files with
unencoded extended header record values. In
read or copy mode, pax shall use the values
specified in the header without
translation, regardless of whether this may
overwrite an existing file with a valid
name. In list mode, pax shall behave
identically to the bypass action.
bypass In read or copy mode, pax shall bypass the
file, causing no change to the destination
hierarchy. In list mode, pax shall write
all requested valid values for the file,
but its method for writing invalid values
is unspecified.
rename In read or copy mode, pax shall act as if
the −i option were in effect for each file
with invalid filename or link name values,
allowing the user to provide a replacement
name interactively. In list mode, pax
shall behave identically to the bypass
action.
UTF‐8 When used in read, copy, or list mode and a
filename, link name, owner name, or any
other field in an extended header record
cannot be translated from the pax UTF‐8
codeset format to the codeset and current
locale of the implementation, pax shall use
the actual UTF‐8 encoding for the name. If
a hdrcharset extended header record is in
effect for this file, the character set
specified by that record shall be used
instead of UTF‐8. If a hdrcharset=BINARY
extended header record is in effect for
this file, no translation shall be
performed.
write In read or copy mode, pax shall write the
file, translating the name, regardless of
whether this may overwrite an existing file
with a valid name. In list mode, pax shall
behave identically to the bypass action.
If no −o invalid=option is specified, pax shall act
as if −oinvalid=bypass were specified. Any
overwriting of existing files that may be allowed by
the −oinvalid= actions shall be subject to permission
(−p) and modification time (−u) restrictions, and
shall be suppressed if the −k option is also
specified.
linkdata
(Applicable only to the −x pax format.) In write
mode, pax shall write the contents of a file to the
archive even when that file is merely a hard link to
a file whose contents have already been written to
the archive.
listopt=format
This keyword specifies the output format of the table
of contents produced when the −v option is specified
in list mode. See List Mode Format Specifications.
To avoid ambiguity, the listopt=format shall be the
only or final keyword=value pair in a −o option-
argument; all characters in the remainder of the
option-argument shall be considered part of the
format string. When multiple −olistopt=format options
are specified, the format strings shall be considered
a single, concatenated string, evaluated in command
line order.
times
(Applicable only to the −x pax format.) When used in
write or copy mode, pax shall include atime and mtime
extended header records for each file. See pax
Extended Header File Times.
In addition to these keywords, if the −x pax format is
specified, any of the keywords and values defined in pax
Extended Header, including implementation extensions, can
be used in −o option-arguments, in either of two modes:
keyword=value
When used in write or copy mode, these keyword/value
pairs shall be included at the beginning of the
archive as typeflag g global extended header records.
When used in read or list mode, these keyword/value
pairs shall act as if they had been at the beginning
of the archive as typeflag g global extended header
records.
keyword:=value
When used in write or copy mode, these keyword/value
pairs shall be included as records at the beginning
of a typeflag x extended header for each file. (This
shall be equivalent to the <equals-sign> form except
that it creates no typeflag g global extended header
records.) When used in read or list mode, these
keyword/value pairs shall act as if they were
included as records at the end of each extended
header; thus, they shall override any global or file-
specific extended header record keywords of the same
names. For example, in the command:
pax −r −o "
gname:=mygroup,
" <archive
the group name will be forced to a new value for all
files read from the archive.
The precedence of −o keywords over various fields in the
archive is described in pax Extended Header Keyword
Precedence.
−p string Specify one or more file characteristic options
(privileges). The string option-argument shall be a string
specifying file characteristics to be retained or discarded
on extraction. The string shall consist of the
specification characters a, e, m, o, and p. Other
implementation-defined characters can be included. 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 bits (see
the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section
3.169, File Mode Bits), access time, modification
time, and any other implementation-defined file
characteristics.
m Do not preserve file modification times.
o Preserve the user ID and group ID.
p Preserve the file mode bits. Other implementation-
defined file mode attributes may be preserved.
In the preceding list, ``preserve'' indicates that an
attribute stored in the archive shall be given to the
extracted file, subject to the permissions of the invoking
process. The access and modification times of the file
shall be preserved unless otherwise specified with the −p
option or not stored in the archive. All attributes that
are not preserved shall be determined as part of the normal
file creation action (see Section 1.1.1.4, File Read,
Write, and Creation).
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 shall 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 shall write a diagnostic message to standard
error. Failure to preserve these items shall affect the
final exit status, but shall 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 shall take precedence. For example, if −p
eme is specified, file modification times are preserved.
−s replstr
Modify file or archive member names named by pattern or
file operands according to the substitution expression
replstr, using the syntax of the ed utility. The concepts
of ``address'' and ``line'' are meaningless in the context
of the pax utility, and shall not be supplied. The format
shall be:
−s /old/new/[gp]
where as in ed, old is a basic regular expression and new
can contain an <ampersand>, '\n' (where n is a digit) back-
references, or subexpression matching. The old string shall
also be permitted to contain <newline> characters.
Any non-null character can be used as a delimiter ('/'
shown here). Multiple −s expressions can be specified; the
expressions shall be applied in the order specified,
terminating with the first successful substitution. The
optional trailing 'g' is as defined in the ed utility. The
optional trailing 'p' shall cause successful substitutions
to be written to standard error. File or archive member
names that substitute to the empty string shall be ignored
when reading and writing archives.
−t When reading files from the file system, and if the user
has the permissions required by utime() to do so, set the
access time of each file read to the access time that it
had before being read by pax.
−u Ignore files that are older (having a less recent file
modification time) than a pre-existing file or archive
member with the same name. In read mode, an archive member
with the same name as a file in the file system shall be
extracted if the archive member is newer than the file. In
write mode, an archive file member with the same name as a
file in the file system shall be superseded if the file is
newer than the archive member. If −a is also specified,
this is accomplished by appending to the archive;
otherwise, it is unspecified whether this is accomplished
by actual replacement in the archive or by appending to the
archive. In copy mode, the file in the destination
hierarchy shall be replaced by the file in the source
hierarchy or by a link to the file in the source hierarchy
if the file in the source hierarchy is newer.
−v In list mode, produce a verbose table of contents (see the
STDOUT section). Otherwise, write archive member pathnames
to standard error (see the STDERR section).
−x format Specify the output archive format. The pax utility shall
support the following formats:
cpio The cpio interchange format; see the EXTENDED
DESCRIPTION section. The default blocksize for
this format for character special archive files
shall be 5120. Implementations shall support all
blocksize values less than or equal to 32256 that
are multiples of 512.
pax The pax interchange format; see the EXTENDED
DESCRIPTION section. The default blocksize for
this format for character special archive files
shall be 5120. Implementations shall support all
blocksize values less than or equal to 32256 that
are multiples of 512.
ustar The tar interchange format; see the EXTENDED
DESCRIPTION section. The default blocksize for
this format for character special archive files
shall be 10240. Implementations shall support
all blocksize values less than or equal to 32256
that are multiples of 512.
Implementation-defined formats shall specify a default
block size as well as any other block sizes supported for
character special archive files.
Any attempt to append to an archive file in a format
different from the existing archive format shall cause pax
to exit immediately with a non-zero exit status.
−X When traversing the file hierarchy specified by a pathname,
pax shall not descend into directories that have a
different device ID (st_dev; see the System Interfaces
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, stat()).
Specifying more than one of the mutually-exclusive options −H and −L
shall not be considered an error and the last option specified shall
determine the behavior of the utility.
The options that operate on the names of files or archive members
(−c, −i, −n, −s, −u, and −v) shall interact as follows. In read mode,
the archive members shall be selected based on the user-specified
pattern operands as modified by the −c, −n, and −u options. Then, any
−s and −i options shall modify, in that order, the names of the
selected files. The −v option shall write names resulting from these
modifications.
In write mode, the files shall be selected based on the user-
specified pathnames as modified by the −n and −u options. Then, any
−s and −i options shall modify, in that order, the names of these
selected files. The −v option shall write names resulting from these
modifications.
If both the −u and −n options are specified, pax shall not consider a
file selected unless it is newer than the file to which it is
compared.
List Mode Format Specifications
In list mode with the −o listopt=format option, the format argument
shall be applied for each selected file. The pax utility shall append
a <newline> to the listopt output for each selected file. The format
argument shall be used as the format string described in the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 5, File Format Notation,
with the exceptions 1. through 6. defined in the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
section of printf, plus the following exceptions:
7. The sequence (keyword) can occur before a format conversion
specifier. The conversion argument is defined by the value of
keyword. The implementation shall support the following
keywords:
-- Any of the Field Name entries in Table 4-14, ustar Header
Block and Table 4-16, Octet-Oriented cpio Archive Entry.
The implementation may support the cpio keywords without
the leading c_ in addition to the form required by Table
4-16, Octet-Oriented cpio Archive Entry.
-- Any keyword defined for the extended header in pax Extended
Header.
-- Any keyword provided as an implementation-defined extension
within the extended header defined in pax Extended Header.
For example, the sequence "%(charset)s" is the string value of
the name of the character set in the extended header.
The result of the keyword conversion argument shall be the
value from the applicable header field or extended header,
without any trailing NULs.
All keyword values used as conversion arguments shall be
translated from the UTF‐8 encoding (or alternative encoding
specified by any hdrcharset extended header record) to the
character set appropriate for the local file system, user
database, and so on, as applicable.
8. An additional conversion specifier character, T, shall be used
to specify time formats. The T conversion specifier character
can be preceded by the sequence (keyword=subformat), where
subformat is a date format as defined by date operands. The
default keyword shall be mtime and the default subformat shall
be:
%b %e %H:%M %Y
9. An additional conversion specifier character, M, shall be used
to specify the file mode string as defined in ls Standard
Output. If (keyword) is omitted, the mode keyword shall be
used. For example, %.1M writes the single character
corresponding to the <entry type> field of the ls −l command.
10. An additional conversion specifier character, D, shall be used
to specify the device for block or special files, if
applicable, in an implementation-defined format. If not
applicable, and (keyword) is specified, then this conversion
shall be equivalent to %(keyword)u. If not applicable, and
(keyword) is omitted, then this conversion shall be equivalent
to <space>.
11. An additional conversion specifier character, F, shall be used
to specify a pathname. The F conversion character can be
preceded by a sequence of <comma>-separated keywords:
(keyword[,keyword] ... )
The values for all the keywords that are non-null shall be
concatenated together, each separated by a '/'. The default
shall be (path) if the keyword path is defined; otherwise, the
default shall be (prefix,name).
12. An additional conversion specifier character, L, shall be used
to specify a symbolic link expansion. If the current file is a
symbolic link, then %L shall expand to:
"%s −> %s", <value of keyword>, <contents of link>
Otherwise, the %L conversion specification shall be the
equivalent of %F.
The following operands shall be supported:
directory The destination directory pathname for copy mode.
file A pathname of a file to be copied or archived.
pattern A pattern matching one or more pathnames of archive
members. A pattern must be given in the name-generating
notation of the pattern matching notation in Section 2.13,
Pattern Matching Notation, including the filename expansion
rules in Section 2.13.3, Patterns Used for Filename
Expansion. The default, if no pattern is specified, is to
select all members in the archive.
In write mode, the standard input shall be used only if no file
operands are specified. It shall be a file containing a list of
pathnames, each terminated by a <newline> character.
In list and read modes, if −f is not specified, the standard input
shall be an archive file.
Otherwise, the standard input shall not be used.
The input file named by the archive option-argument, or standard
input when the archive is read from there, shall be a file formatted
according to one of the specifications in the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
section or some other implementation-defined format.
The file /dev/tty shall be used to write prompts and read responses.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
pax:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization
Variables the precedence of internationalization variables
used to determine the values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
LC_COLLATE
Determine the locale for the behavior of ranges,
equivalence classes, and multi-character collating elements
used in the pattern matching expressions for the pattern
operand, the basic regular expression for the −s option,
and the extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr
locale keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte
as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input
files), the behavior of character classes used in the
extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr locale
keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category, and pattern matching.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale used to process affirmative responses,
and the locale used to affect the format and contents of
diagnostic messages and prompts written to standard error.
LC_TIME Determine the format and contents of date and time strings
when the −v option is specified.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
TMPDIR Determine the pathname that provides part of the default
global extended header record file, as described for the −o
globexthdr= keyword in the OPTIONS section.
TZ Determine the timezone used to calculate date and time
strings when the −v option is specified. If TZ is unset or
null, an unspecified default timezone shall be used.
Default.
In write mode, if −f is not specified, the standard output shall be
the archive formatted according to one of the specifications in the
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section, or some other implementation-defined
format (see −x format).
In list mode, when the −olistopt=format has been specified, the
selected archive members shall be written to standard output using
the format described under List Mode Format Specifications. In list
mode without the −olistopt=format option, the table of contents of
the selected archive members shall be written to standard output
using the following format:
"%s\n", <pathname>
If the −v option is specified in list mode, the table of contents of
the selected archive members shall be written to standard output
using the following formats.
For pathnames representing hard links to previous members of the
archive:
"%s == %s\n", <ls −l listing>, <linkname>
For all other pathnames:
"%s\n", <ls −l listing>
where <ls −l listing> shall be the format specified by the ls utility
with the −l option. When writing pathnames in this format, it is
unspecified what is written for fields for which the underlying
archive format does not have the correct information, although the
correct number of <blank>-separated fields shall be written.
In list mode, standard output shall not be buffered more than a
pathname (plus any associated information and a <newline> terminator)
at a time.
If −v is specified in read, write, or copy modes, pax shall write the
pathnames it processes to the standard error output using the
following format:
"%s\n", <pathname>
These pathnames shall be written as soon as processing is begun on
the file or archive member, and shall be flushed to standard error.
The trailing <newline>, which shall not be buffered, is written when
the file has been read or written.
If the −s option is specified, and the replacement string has a
trailing 'p', substitutions shall be written to standard error in the
following format:
"%s >> %s\n", <original pathname>, <new pathname>
In all operating modes of pax, optional messages of unspecified
format concerning the input archive format and volume number, the
number of files, blocks, volumes, and media parts as well as other
diagnostic messages may be written to standard error.
In all formats, for both standard output and standard error, it is
unspecified how non-printable characters in pathnames or link names
are written.
When using the −xpax archive format, if a filename, link name, group
name, owner name, or any other field in an extended header record
cannot be translated between the codeset in use for that extended
header record and the character set of the current locale, pax shall
write a diagnostic message to standard error, shall process the file
as described for the −o invalid= option, and then shall continue
processing with the next file.
In read mode, the extracted output files shall be of the archived
file type. In copy mode, the copied output files shall be the type
of the file being copied. In either mode, existing files in the
destination hierarchy shall be overwritten only when all permission
(−p), modification time (−u), and invalid-value (−oinvalid=) tests
allow it.
In write mode, the output file named by the −f option-argument shall
be a file formatted according to one of the specifications in the
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section, or some other implementation-defined
format.
pax Interchange Format
A pax archive tape or file produced in the −xpax format shall contain
a series of blocks. The physical layout of the archive shall be
identical to the ustar format described in ustar Interchange Format.
Each file archived shall be represented by the following sequence:
* An optional header block with extended header records. This
header block is of the form described in pax Header Block, with a
typeflag value of x or g. The extended header records, described
in pax Extended Header, shall be included as the data for this
header block.
* A header block that describes the file. Any fields in the
preceding optional extended header shall override the associated
fields in this header block for this file.
* Zero or more blocks that contain the contents of the file.
At the end of the archive file there shall be two 512-byte blocks
filled with binary zeros, interpreted as an end-of-archive indicator.
A schematic of an example archive with global extended header records
and two actual files is shown in Figure 4-1, pax Format Archive
Example. In the example, the second file in the archive has no
extended header preceding it, presumably because it has no need for
extended attributes.
Figure 4-1: pax Format Archive Example
pax Header Block
The pax header block shall be identical to the ustar header block
described in ustar Interchange Format, except that two additional
typeflag values are defined:
x Represents extended header records for the following file in
the archive (which shall have its own ustar header block). The
format of these extended header records shall be as described
in pax Extended Header.
g Represents global extended header records for the following
files in the archive. The format of these extended header
records shall be as described in pax Extended Header. Each
value shall affect all subsequent files that do not override
that value in their own extended header record and until
another global extended header record is reached that provides
another value for the same field. The typeflag g global headers
should not be used with interchange media that could suffer
partial data loss in transporting the archive.
For both of these types, the size field shall be the size of the
extended header records in octets. The other fields in the header
block are not meaningful to this version of the pax utility. However,
if this archive is read by a pax utility conforming to the
ISO POSIX‐2:1993 standard, the header block fields are used to create
a regular file that contains the extended header records as data.
Therefore, header block field values should be selected to provide
reasonable file access to this regular file.
A further difference from the ustar header block is that data blocks
for files of typeflag 1 (the digit one) (hard link) may be included,
which means that the size field may be greater than zero. Archives
created by pax −o linkdata shall include these data blocks with the
hard links.
pax Extended Header
A pax extended header contains values that are inappropriate for the
ustar header block because of limitations in that format: fields
requiring a character encoding other than that described in the
ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard, fields representing file attributes not
described in the ustar header, and fields whose format or length do
not fit the requirements of the ustar header. The values in an
extended header add attributes to the following file (or files; see
the description of the typeflag g header block) or override values in
the following header block(s), as indicated in the following list of
keywords.
An extended header shall consist of one or more records, each
constructed as follows:
"%d %s=%s\n", <length>, <keyword>, <value>
The extended header records shall be encoded according to the
ISO/IEC 10646‐1:2000 standard UTF‐8 encoding. The <length> field,
<blank>, <equals-sign>, and <newline> shown shall be limited to the
portable character set, as encoded in UTF‐8. The <keyword> fields can
be any UTF‐8 characters. The <length> field shall be the decimal
length of the extended header record in octets, including the
trailing <newline>. If there is a hdrcharset extended header in
effect for a file, the value field for any gname, linkpath, path, and
uname extended header records shall be encoded using the character
set specified by the hdrcharset extended header record; otherwise,
the value field shall be encoded using UTF‐8. The value field for all
other keywords specified by POSIX.1‐2008 shall be encoded using
UTF‐8.
The <keyword> field shall be one of the entries from the following
list or a keyword provided as an implementation extension. Keywords
consisting entirely of lowercase letters, digits, and periods are
reserved for future standardization. A keyword shall not include an
<equals-sign>. (In the following list, the notations ``file(s)'' or
``block(s)'' is used to acknowledge that a keyword affects the
following single file after a typeflag x extended header, but
possibly multiple files after typeflag g. Any requirements in the
list for pax to include a record when in write or copy mode shall
apply only when such a record has not already been provided through
the use of the −o option. When used in copy mode, pax shall behave as
if an archive had been created with applicable extended header
records and then extracted.)
atime The file access time for the following file(s), equivalent
to the value of the st_atime member of the stat structure
for a file, as described by the stat() function. The access
time shall be restored if the process has appropriate
privileges required to do so. The format of the <value>
shall be as described in pax Extended Header File Times.
charset The name of the character set used to encode the data in
the following file(s). The entries in the following table
are defined to refer to known standards; additional names
may be agreed on between the originator and recipient.
┌────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐
│ <value> │ Formal Standard │
├────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ISO-IR 646 1990 │ ISO/IEC 646:1990 │
│ISO-IR 8859 1 1998 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐1:1998 │
│ISO-IR 8859 2 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐2:1999 │
│ISO-IR 8859 3 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐3:1999 │
│ISO-IR 8859 4 1998 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐4:1998 │
│ISO-IR 8859 5 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐5:1999 │
│ISO-IR 8859 6 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐6:1999 │
│ISO-IR 8859 7 1987 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐7:1987 │
│ISO-IR 8859 8 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐8:1999 │
│ISO-IR 8859 9 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐9:1999 │
│ISO-IR 8859 10 1998 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐10:1998 │
│ISO-IR 8859 13 1998 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐13:1998 │
│ISO-IR 8859 14 1998 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐14:1998 │
│ISO-IR 8859 15 1999 │ ISO/IEC 8859‐15:1999 │
│ISO-IR 10646 2000 │ ISO/IEC 10646:2000 │
│ISO-IR 10646 2000 UTF-8 │ ISO/IEC 10646, UTF-8 encoding │
│BINARY │ None. │
└────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘
The encoding is included in an extended header for
information only; when pax is used as described in
POSIX.1‐2008, it shall not translate the file data into any
other encoding. The BINARY entry indicates unencoded binary
data.
When used in write or copy mode, it is implementation-
defined whether pax includes a charset extended header
record for a file.
comment A series of characters used as a comment. All characters in
the <value> field shall be ignored by pax.
gid The group ID of the group that owns the file, expressed as
a decimal number using digits from the ISO/IEC 646:1991
standard. This record shall override the gid field in the
following header block(s). When used in write or copy mode,
pax shall include a gid extended header record for each
file whose group ID is greater than 2097151 (octal
7777777).
gname The group of the file(s), formatted as a group name in the
group database. This record shall override the gid and
gname fields in the following header block(s), and any gid
extended header record. When used in read, copy, or list
mode, pax shall translate the name from the encoding in the
header record to the character set appropriate for the
group database on the receiving system. If any of the
characters cannot be translated, and if neither the
−oinvalid=UTF‐8 option nor the −oinvalid=binary option is
specified, the results are implementation-defined. When
used in write or copy mode, pax shall include a gname
extended header record for each file whose group name
cannot be represented entirely with the letters and digits
of the portable character set.
hdrcharset
The name of the character set used to encode the value
field of the gname, linkpath, path, and uname pax extended
header records. The entries in the following table are
defined to refer to known standards; additional names may
be agreed between the originator and the recipient.
┌────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐
│ <value> │ Formal Standard │
├────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ISO-IR 10646 2000 UTF-8 │ ISO/IEC 10646, UTF-8 encoding │
│BINARY │ None. │
└────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘
If no hdrcharset extended header record is specified, the
default character set used to encode all values in extended
header records shall be the ISO/IEC 10646‐1:2000 standard
UTF‐8 encoding.
The BINARY entry indicates that all values recorded in
extended headers for affected files are unencoded binary
data from the underlying system.
linkpath The pathname of a link being created to another file, of
any type, previously archived. This record shall override
the linkname field in the following ustar header block(s).
The following ustar header block shall determine the type
of link created. If typeflag of the following header block
is 1, it shall be a hard link. If typeflag is 2, it shall
be a symbolic link and the linkpath value shall be the
contents of the symbolic link. The pax utility shall
translate the name of the link (contents of the symbolic
link) from the encoding in the header to the character set
appropriate for the local file system. When used in write
or copy mode, pax shall include a linkpath extended header
record for each link whose pathname cannot be represented
entirely with the members of the portable character set
other than NUL.
mtime The file modification time of the following file(s),
equivalent to the value of the st_mtime member of the stat
structure for a file, as described in the stat() function.
This record shall override the mtime field in the following
header block(s). The modification time shall be restored if
the process has appropriate privileges required to do so.
The format of the <value> shall be as described in pax
Extended Header File Times.
path The pathname of the following file(s). This record shall
override the name and prefix fields in the following header
block(s). The pax utility shall translate the pathname of
the file from the encoding in the header to the character
set appropriate for the local file system.
When used in write or copy mode, pax shall include a path
extended header record for each file whose pathname cannot
be represented entirely with the members of the portable
character set other than NUL.
realtime.any
The keywords prefixed by ``realtime.'' are reserved for
future standardization.
security.any
The keywords prefixed by ``security.'' are reserved for
future standardization.
size The size of the file in octets, expressed as a decimal
number using digits from the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard.
This record shall override the size field in the following
header block(s). When used in write or copy mode, pax shall
include a size extended header record for each file with a
size value greater than 8589934591 (octal 77777777777).
uid The user ID of the file owner, expressed as a decimal
number using digits from the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard.
This record shall override the uid field in the following
header block(s). When used in write or copy mode, pax shall
include a uid extended header record for each file whose
owner ID is greater than 2097151 (octal 7777777).
uname The owner of the following file(s), formatted as a user
name in the user database. This record shall override the
uid and uname fields in the following header block(s), and
any uid extended header record. When used in read, copy, or
list mode, pax shall translate the name from the encoding
in the header record to the character set appropriate for
the user database on the receiving system. If any of the
characters cannot be translated, and if neither the
−oinvalid=UTF‐8 option nor the −oinvalid=binary option is
specified, the results are implementation-defined. When
used in write or copy mode, pax shall include a uname
extended header record for each file whose user name cannot
be represented entirely with the letters and digits of the
portable character set.
If the <value> field is zero length, it shall delete any header block
field, previously entered extended header value, or global extended
header value of the same name.
If a keyword in an extended header record (or in a −o option-
argument) overrides or deletes a corresponding field in the ustar
header block, pax shall ignore the contents of that header block
field.
Unlike the ustar header block fields, NULs shall not delimit
<value>s; all characters within the <value> field shall be considered
data for the field. None of the length limitations of the ustar
header block fields in Table 4-14, ustar Header Block shall apply to
the extended header records.
pax Extended Header Keyword Precedence
This section describes the precedence in which the various header
records and fields and command line options are selected to apply to
a file in the archive. When pax is used in read or list modes, it
shall determine a file attribute in the following sequence:
1. If −odelete=keyword-prefix is used, the affected attributes shall
be determined from step 7., if applicable, or ignored otherwise.
2. If −okeyword:= is used, the affected attributes shall be ignored.
3. If −okeyword:=value is used, the affected attribute shall be
assigned the value.
4. If there is a typeflag x extended header record, the affected
attribute shall be assigned the <value>. When extended header
records conflict, the last one given in the header shall take
precedence.
5. If −okeyword=value is used, the affected attribute shall be
assigned the value.
6. If there is a typeflag g global extended header record, the
affected attribute shall be assigned the <value>. When global
extended header records conflict, the last one given in the
global header shall take precedence.
7. Otherwise, the attribute shall be determined from the ustar
header block.
pax Extended Header File Times
The pax utility shall write an mtime record for each file in write or
copy modes if the file's modification time cannot be represented
exactly in the ustar header logical record described in ustar
Interchange Format. This can occur if the time is out of ustar
range, or if the file system of the underlying implementation
supports non-integer time granularities and the time is not an
integer. All of these time records shall be formatted as a decimal
representation of the time in seconds since the Epoch. If a <period>
('.') decimal point character is present, the digits to the right of
the point shall represent the units of a subsecond timing
granularity, where the first digit is tenths of a second and each
subsequent digit is a tenth of the previous digit. In read or copy
mode, the pax utility shall truncate the time of a file to the
greatest value that is not greater than the input header file time.
In write or copy mode, the pax utility shall output a time exactly if
it can be represented exactly as a decimal number, and otherwise
shall generate only enough digits so that the same time shall be
recovered if the file is extracted on a system whose underlying
implementation supports the same time granularity.
ustar Interchange Format
A ustar archive tape or file shall contain a series of logical
records. Each logical record shall be a fixed-size logical record of
512 octets (see below). Although this format may be thought of as
being stored on 9-track industry-standard 12.7 mm (0.5 in) magnetic
tape, other types of transportable media are not excluded. Each file
archived shall be represented by a header logical record that
describes the file, followed by zero or more logical records that
give the contents of the file. At the end of the archive file there
shall be two 512-octet logical records filled with binary zeros,
interpreted as an end-of-archive indicator.
The logical records may be grouped for physical I/O operations, as
described under the −bblocksize and −x ustar options. Each group of
logical records may be written with a single operation equivalent to
the write() function. On magnetic tape, the result of this write
shall be a single tape physical block. The last physical block shall
always be the full size, so logical records after the two zero
logical records may contain undefined data.
The header logical record shall be structured as shown in the
following table. All lengths and offsets are in decimal.
Table 4-14: ustar Header Block
┌───────────┬──────────────┬────────────────────┐
│Field Name │ Octet Offset │ Length (in Octets) │
├───────────┼──────────────┼────────────────────┤
│name │ 0 │ 100 │
│mode │ 100 │ 8 │
│uid │ 108 │ 8 │
│gid │ 116 │ 8 │
│size │ 124 │ 12 │
│mtime │ 136 │ 12 │
│chksum │ 148 │ 8 │
│typeflag │ 156 │ 1 │
│linkname │ 157 │ 100 │
│magic │ 257 │ 6 │
│version │ 263 │ 2 │
│uname │ 265 │ 32 │
│gname │ 297 │ 32 │
│devmajor │ 329 │ 8 │
│devminor │ 337 │ 8 │
│prefix │ 345 │ 155 │
└───────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────┘
All characters in the header logical record shall be represented in
the coded character set of the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard. For maximum
portability between implementations, names should be selected from
characters represented by the portable filename character set as
octets with the most significant bit zero. If an implementation
supports the use of characters outside of <slash> and the portable
filename character set in names for files, users, and groups, one or
more implementation-defined encodings of these characters shall be
provided for interchange purposes.
However, the pax utility shall never create filenames on the local
system that cannot be accessed via the procedures described in
POSIX.1‐2008. If a filename is found on the medium that would create
an invalid filename, it is implementation-defined whether the data
from the file is stored on the file hierarchy and under what name it
is stored. The pax utility may choose to ignore these files as long
as it produces an error indicating that the file is being ignored.
Each field within the header logical record is contiguous; that is,
there is no padding used. Each character on the archive medium shall
be stored contiguously.
The fields magic, uname, and gname are character strings each
terminated by a NUL character. The fields name, linkname, and prefix
are NUL-terminated character strings except when all characters in
the array contain non-NUL characters including the last character.
The version field is two octets containing the characters "00" (zero-
zero). The typeflag contains a single character. All other fields are
leading zero-filled octal numbers using digits from the
ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard IRV. Each numeric field is terminated by
one or more <space> or NUL characters.
The name and the prefix fields shall produce the pathname of the
file. A new pathname shall be formed, if prefix is not an empty
string (its first character is not NUL), by concatenating prefix (up
to the first NUL character), a <slash> character, and name;
otherwise, name is used alone. In either case, name is terminated at
the first NUL character. If prefix begins with a NUL character, it
shall be ignored. In this manner, pathnames of at most 256 characters
can be supported. If a pathname does not fit in the space provided,
pax shall notify the user of the error, and shall not store any part
of the file—header or data—on the medium.
The linkname field, described below, shall not use the prefix to
produce a pathname. As such, a linkname is limited to 100 characters.
If the name does not fit in the space provided, pax shall notify the
user of the error, and shall not attempt to store the link on the
medium.
The mode field provides 12 bits encoded in the ISO/IEC 646:1991
standard octal digit representation. The encoded bits shall
represent the following values:
Table: ustar mode Field
┌──────────┬──────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│Bit Value │ POSIX.1‐2008 Bit │ Description │
├──────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 04000 │ S_ISUID │ Set UID on execution. │
│ 02000 │ S_ISGID │ Set GID on execution. │
│ 01000 │ <reserved> │ Reserved for future standardization. │
│ 00400 │ S_IRUSR │ Read permission for file owner class. │
│ 00200 │ S_IWUSR │ Write permission for file owner class. │
│ 00100 │ S_IXUSR │ Execute/search permission for file owner class. │
│ 00040 │ S_IRGRP │ Read permission for file group class. │
│ 00020 │ S_IWGRP │ Write permission for file group class. │
│ 00010 │ S_IXGRP │ Execute/search permission for file group class. │
│ 00004 │ S_IROTH │ Read permission for file other class. │
│ 00002 │ S_IWOTH │ Write permission for file other class. │
│ 00001 │ S_IXOTH │ Execute/search permission for file other class. │
└──────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
When appropriate privileges are required to set one of these mode
bits, and the user restoring the files from the archive does not have
appropriate privileges, the mode bits for which the user does not
have appropriate privileges shall be ignored. Some of the mode bits
in the archive format are not mentioned elsewhere in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008. If the implementation does not support those bits, they
may be ignored.
The uid and gid fields are the user and group ID of the owner and
group of the file, respectively.
The size field is the size of the file in octets. If the typeflag
field is set to specify a file to be of type 1 (a link) or 2 (a
symbolic link), the size field shall be specified as zero. If the
typeflag field is set to specify a file of type 5 (directory), the
size field shall be interpreted as described under the definition of
that record type. No data logical records are stored for types 1, 2,
or 5. If the typeflag field is set to 3 (character special file), 4
(block special file), or 6 (FIFO), the meaning of the size field is
unspecified by this volume of POSIX.1‐2008, and no data logical
records shall be stored on the medium. Additionally, for type 6, the
size field shall be ignored when reading. If the typeflag field is
set to any other value, the number of logical records written
following the header shall be (size+511)/512, ignoring any fraction
in the result of the division.
The mtime field shall be the modification time of the file at the
time it was archived. It is the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard
representation of the octal value of the modification time obtained
from the stat() function.
The chksum field shall be the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard IRV
representation of the octal value of the simple sum of all octets in
the header logical record. Each octet in the header shall be treated
as an unsigned value. These values shall be added to an unsigned
integer, initialized to zero, the precision of which is not less than
17 bits. When calculating the checksum, the chksum field is treated
as if it were all <space> characters.
The typeflag field specifies the type of file archived. If a
particular implementation does not recognize the type, or the user
does not have appropriate privileges to create that type, the file
shall be extracted as if it were a regular file if the file type is
defined to have a meaning for the size field that could cause data
logical records to be written on the medium (see the previous
description for size). If conversion to a regular file occurs, the
pax utility shall produce an error indicating that the conversion
took place. All of the typeflag fields shall be coded in the
ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard IRV:
0 Represents a regular file. For backwards-compatibility, a
typeflag value of binary zero ('\0') should be recognized as
meaning a regular file when extracting files from the
archive. Archives written with this version of the archive
file format create regular files with a typeflag value of the
ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard IRV '0'.
1 Represents a file linked to another file, of any type,
previously archived. Such files are identified by having the
same device and file serial numbers, and pathnames that refer
to different directory entries. All such files shall be
archived as linked files. The linked-to name is specified in
the linkname field with a NUL-character terminator if it is
less than 100 octets in length.
2 Represents a symbolic link. The contents of the symbolic link
shall be stored in the linkname field.
3,4 Represent character special files and block special files
respectively. In this case the devmajor and devminor fields
shall contain information defining the device, the format of
which is unspecified by this volume of POSIX.1‐2008.
Implementations may map the device specifications to their
own local specification or may ignore the entry.
5 Specifies a directory or subdirectory. On systems where disk
allocation is performed on a directory basis, the size field
shall contain the maximum number of octets (which may be
rounded to the nearest disk block allocation unit) that the
directory may hold. A size field of zero indicates no such
limiting. Systems that do not support limiting in this manner
should ignore the size field.
6 Specifies a FIFO special file. Note that the archiving of a
FIFO file archives the existence of this file and not its
contents.
7 Reserved to represent a file to which an implementation has
associated some high-performance attribute. Implementations
without such extensions should treat this file as a regular
file (type 0).
A‐Z The letters 'A' to 'Z', inclusive, are reserved for custom
implementations. All other values are reserved for future
versions of this standard.
It is unspecified whether files with pathnames that refer to the same
directory entry are archived as linked files or as separate files. If
they are archived as linked files, this means that attempting to
extract both pathnames from the resulting archive will always cause
an error (unless the −u option is used) because the link cannot be
created.
It is unspecified whether files with the same device and file serial
numbers being appended to an archive are treated as linked files to
members that were in the archive before the append.
Attempts to archive a socket using ustar interchange format shall
produce a diagnostic message. Handling of other file types is
implementation-defined.
The magic field is the specification that this archive was output in
this archive format. If this field contains ustar (the five
characters from the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard IRV shown followed by
NUL), the uname and gname fields shall contain the ISO/IEC 646:1991
standard IRV representation of the owner and group of the file,
respectively (truncated to fit, if necessary). When the file is
restored by a privileged, protection-preserving version of the
utility, the user and group databases shall be scanned for these
names. If found, the user and group IDs contained within these files
shall be used rather than the values contained within the uid and gid
fields.
cpio Interchange Format
The octet-oriented cpio archive format shall be a series of entries,
each comprising a header that describes the file, the name of the
file, and then the contents of the file.
An archive may be recorded as a series of fixed-size blocks of
octets. This blocking shall be used only to make physical I/O more
efficient. The last group of blocks shall always be at the full
size.
For the octet-oriented cpio archive format, the individual entry
information shall be in the order indicated and described by the
following table; see also the <cpio.h> header.
Table 4-16: Octet-Oriented cpio Archive Entry
┌─────────────────────┬────────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ Header Field Name │ Length (in Octets) │ Interpreted as │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│c_magic │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_dev │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_ino │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_mode │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_uid │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_gid │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_nlink │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_rdev │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_mtime │ 11 │ Octal number │
│c_namesize │ 6 │ Octal number │
│c_filesize │ 11 │ Octal number │
├─────────────────────┼────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│Filename Field Name │ Length │ Interpreted as │
├─────────────────────┴────────────────────┴─────────────────┤
│c_name c_namesize Pathname string │
├─────────────────────┬────────────────────┬─────────────────┤
│File Data Field Name │ Length │ Interpreted as │
├─────────────────────┴────────────────────┴─────────────────┤
│c_filedata c_filesize Data │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
cpio Header
For each file in the archive, a header as defined previously shall be
written. The information in the header fields is written as streams
of the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard characters interpreted as octal
numbers. The octal numbers shall be extended to the necessary length
by appending the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard IRV zeros at the most-
significant-digit end of the number; the result is written to the
most-significant digit of the stream of octets first. The fields
shall be interpreted as follows:
c_magic Identify the archive as being a transportable archive by
containing the identifying value "070707".
c_dev, c_ino
Contains values that uniquely identify the file within the
archive (that is, no files contain the same pair of c_dev
and c_ino values unless they are links to the same file).
The values shall be determined in an unspecified manner.
c_mode Contains the file type and access permissions as defined in
the following table.
Table 4-17: Values for cpio c_mode Field
┌──────────────────────┬─────────┬────────────────────────┐
│File Permissions Name │ Value │ Indicates │
├──────────────────────┼─────────┼────────────────────────┤
│C_IRUSR │ 000400 │ Read by owner │
│C_IWUSR │ 000200 │ Write by owner │
│C_IXUSR │ 000100 │ Execute by owner │
│C_IRGRP │ 000040 │ Read by group │
│C_IWGRP │ 000020 │ Write by group │
│C_IXGRP │ 000010 │ Execute by group │
│C_IROTH │ 000004 │ Read by others │
│C_IWOTH │ 000002 │ Write by others │
│C_IXOTH │ 000001 │ Execute by others │
│C_ISUID │ 004000 │ Set uid │
│C_ISGID │ 002000 │ Set gid │
│C_ISVTX │ 001000 │ Reserved │
├──────────────────────┼─────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ File Type Name │ Value │ Indicates │
├──────────────────────┼─────────┼────────────────────────┤
│C_ISDIR │ 040000 │ Directory │
│C_ISFIFO │ 010000 │ FIFO │
│C_ISREG │ 0100000 │ Regular file │
│C_ISLNK │ 0120000 │ Symbolic link │
│ │ │ │
│C_ISBLK │ 060000 │ Block special file │
│C_ISCHR │ 020000 │ Character special file │
│C_ISSOCK │ 0140000 │ Socket │
│ │ │ │
│C_ISCTG │ 0110000 │ Reserved │
└──────────────────────┴─────────┴────────────────────────┘
Directories, FIFOs, symbolic links, and regular files shall
be supported on a system conforming to this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008; additional values defined previously are
reserved for compatibility with existing systems.
Additional file types may be supported; however, such files
should not be written to archives intended to be
transported to other systems.
c_uid Contains the user ID of the owner.
c_gid Contains the group ID of the group.
c_nlink Contains a number greater than or equal to the number of
links in the archive referencing the file. If the −a option
is used to append to a cpio archive, then the pax utility
need not account for the files in the existing part of the
archive when calculating the c_nlink values for the
appended part of the archive, and need not alter the
c_nlink values in the existing part of the archive if
additional files with the same c_dev and c_ino values are
appended to the archive.
c_rdev Contains implementation-defined information for character
or block special files.
c_mtime Contains the latest time of modification of the file at the
time the archive was created.
c_namesize
Contains the length of the pathname, including the
terminating NUL character.
c_filesize
Contains the length in octets of the data section following
the header structure.
cpio Filename
The c_name field shall contain the pathname of the file. The length
of this field in octets is the value of c_namesize.
If a filename is found on the medium that would create an invalid
pathname, it is implementation-defined whether the data from the file
is stored on the file hierarchy and under what name it is stored.
All characters shall be represented in the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard
IRV. For maximum portability between implementations, names should be
selected from characters represented by the portable filename
character set as octets with the most significant bit zero. If an
implementation supports the use of characters outside the portable
filename character set in names for files, users, and groups, one or
more implementation-defined encodings of these characters shall be
provided for interchange purposes. However, the pax utility shall
never create filenames on the local system that cannot be accessed
via the procedures described previously in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008. If a filename is found on the medium that would create
an invalid filename, it is implementation-defined whether the data
from the file is stored on the local file system and under what name
it is stored. The pax utility may choose to ignore these files as
long as it produces an error indicating that the file is being
ignored.
cpio File Data
Following c_name, there shall be c_filesize octets of data.
Interpretation of such data occurs in a manner dependent on the file.
For regular files, the data shall consist of the contents of the
file. For symbolic links, the data shall consist of the contents of
the symbolic link. If c_filesize is zero, no data shall be contained
in c_filedata.
When restoring from an archive:
* If the user does not have appropriate privileges to create a file
of the specified type, pax shall ignore the entry and write an
error message to standard error.
* Only regular files and symbolic links have data to be restored.
Presuming a regular file meets any selection criteria that might
be imposed on the format-reading utility by the user, such data
shall be restored.
* If a user does not have appropriate privileges to set a
particular mode flag, the flag shall be ignored. Some of the mode
flags in the archive format are not mentioned elsewhere in this
volume of POSIX.1‐2008. If the implementation does not support
those flags, they may be ignored.
cpio Special Entries
FIFO special files, directories, and the trailer shall be recorded
with c_filesize equal to zero. Symbolic links shall be recorded with
c_filesize equal to the length of the contents of the symbolic link.
For other special files, c_filesize is unspecified by this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008. The header for the next file entry in the archive shall
be written directly after the last octet of the file entry preceding
it. A header denoting the filename TRAILER!!! shall indicate the end
of the archive; the contents of octets in the last block of the
archive following such a header are undefined.
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 All files were processed successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
If pax cannot create a file or a link when reading an archive or
cannot find a file when writing an archive, or cannot preserve the
user ID, group ID, or file mode when the −p option is specified, a
diagnostic message shall be written to standard error and a non-zero
exit status shall be returned, but processing shall continue. In the
case where pax cannot create a link to a file, pax shall not, by
default, create a second copy of the file.
If the extraction of a file from an archive is prematurely terminated
by a signal or error, pax may have only partially extracted the file
or (if the −n option was not specified) may have extracted a file of
the same name as that specified by the user, but which is not the
file the user wanted. Additionally, the file modes of extracted
directories may have additional bits from the S_IRWXU mask set as
well as incorrect modification and access times.
The following sections are informative.
Caution is advised when using the −a option to append to a cpio
format archive. If any of the files being appended happen to be given
the same c_dev and c_ino values as a file in the existing part of the
archive, then they may be treated as links to that file on
extraction. Thus, it is risky to use −a with cpio format except when
it is done on the same system that the original archive was created
on, and with the same pax utility, and in the knowledge that there
has been little or no file system activity since the original archive
was created that could lead to any of the files appended being given
the same c_dev and c_ino values as an unrelated file in the existing
part of the archive. Also, when (intentionally) appending additional
links to a file in the existing part of the archive, the c_nlink
values in the modified archive can be smaller than the number of
links to the file in the archive, which may mean that the links are
not preserved on extraction.
The −p (privileges) option was invented to reconcile differences
between historical tar and cpio implementations. In particular, the
two utilities use −m in diametrically opposed ways. The −p option
also provides a consistent means of extending the ways in which
future file attributes can be addressed, such as for enhanced
security systems or high-performance files. Although it may seem
complex, there are really two modes that are most commonly used:
−p e ``Preserve everything''. This would be used by the historical
superuser, someone with all appropriate privileges, to
preserve all aspects of the files as they are recorded in the
archive. The e flag is the sum of o and p, and other
implementation-defined attributes.
−p p ``Preserve'' the file mode bits. This would be used by the
user with regular privileges who wished to preserve aspects
of the file other than the ownership. The file times are
preserved by default, but two other flags are offered to
disable these and use the time of extraction.
The one pathname per line format of standard input precludes
pathnames containing <newline> characters. Although such pathnames
violate the portable filename guidelines, they may exist and their
presence may inhibit usage of pax within shell scripts. This problem
is inherited from historical archive programs. The problem can be
avoided by listing filename arguments on the command line instead of
on standard input.
It is almost certain that appropriate privileges are required for pax
to accomplish parts of this volume of POSIX.1‐2008. Specifically,
creating files of type block special or character special, restoring
file access times unless the files are owned by the user (the −t
option), or preserving file owner, group, and mode (the −p option)
all probably require appropriate privileges.
In read mode, implementations are permitted to overwrite files when
the archive has multiple members with the same name. This may fail if
permissions on the first version of the file do not permit it to be
overwritten.
The cpio and ustar formats can only support files up to 8589934592
bytes (8 ∗ 2^30) in size.
When archives containing binary header information are listed , the
filenames printed may cause strange behavior on some terminals.
When all of the following are true:
1. A file of type directory is being placed into an archive.
2. The ustar archive format is being used.
3. The pathname of the directory is less than or equal to 155 bytes
long (it will fit in the prefix field in the ustar header block).
4. The last component of the pathname of the directory is longer
than 100 bytes long (it will not fit in the name field in the
ustar header block).
some implementations of the pax utility will place the entire
directory pathname in the prefix field, set the name field to an
empty string, and place the directory in the archive. Other
implementations of the pax utility will give an error under these
conditions because the name field is not large enough to hold the
last component of the directory name. This standard allows either
behavior. However, when extracting a directory from a ustar format
archive, this standard requires that all implementations be able to
extract a directory even if the name field contains an empty string
as long as the prefix field does not also contain an empty string.
The following command:
pax −w −f /dev/rmt/1m .
copies the contents of the current directory to tape drive 1, medium
density (assuming historical System V device naming procedures—the
historical BSD device name would be /dev/rmt9).
The following commands:
mkdir newdir
pax −rw olddir newdir
copy the olddir directory hierarchy to newdir.
pax −r −s ',^//*usr//*,,' −f a.pax
reads the archive a.pax, with all files rooted in /usr in the archive
extracted relative to the current directory.
Using the option:
−o listopt="%M %(atime)T %(size)D %(name)s"
overrides the default output description in Standard Output and
instead writes:
−rw−rw−−− Jan 12 15:53 2003 1492 /usr/foo/bar
Using the options:
−o listopt='%L\t%(size)D\n%.7' \
−o listopt='(name)s\n%(atime)T\n%T'
overrides the default output description in Standard Output and
instead writes:
/usr/foo/bar −> /tmp 1492
/usr/fo
Jan 12 15:53 1991
Jan 31 15:53 2003
The pax utility was new for the ISO POSIX‐2:1993 standard. It
represents a peaceful compromise between advocates of the historical
tar and cpio utilities.
A fundamental difference between cpio and tar was in the way
directories were treated. The cpio utility did not treat directories
differently from other files, and to select a directory and its
contents required that each file in the hierarchy be explicitly
specified. For tar, a directory matched every file in the file
hierarchy it rooted.
The pax utility offers both interfaces; by default, directories map
into the file hierarchy they root. The −d option causes pax to skip
any file not explicitly referenced, as cpio historically did. The tar
−style behavior was chosen as the default because it was believed
that this was the more common usage and because tar is the more
commonly available interface, as it was historically provided on both
System V and BSD implementations.
The data interchange format specification in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008 requires that processes with ``appropriate privileges''
shall always restore the ownership and permissions of extracted files
exactly as archived. If viewed from the historic equivalence between
superuser and ``appropriate privileges'', there are two problems with
this requirement. First, users running as superusers may unknowingly
set dangerous permissions on extracted files. Second, it is
needlessly limiting, in that superusers cannot extract files and own
them as superuser unless the archive was created by the superuser.
(It should be noted that restoration of ownerships and permissions
for the superuser, by default, is historical practice in cpio, but
not in In order to avoid these two problems, the pax specification
has an additional ``privilege'' mechanism, the −p option. Only a pax
invocation with the privileges needed, and which has the −p option
set using the e specification character, has appropriate privileges
to restore full ownership and permission information.
Note also that this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 requires that the file
ownership and access permissions shall be set, on extraction, in the
same fashion as the creat() function when provided with the mode
stored in the archive. This means that the file creation mask of the
user is applied to the file permissions.
Users should note that directories may be created by pax while
extracting files with permissions that are different from those that
existed at the time the archive was created. When extracting
sensitive information into a directory hierarchy that no longer
exists, users are encouraged to set their file creation mask
appropriately to protect these files during extraction.
The table of contents output is written to standard output to
facilitate pipeline processing.
An early proposal had hard links displaying for all pathnames. This
was removed because it complicates the output of the case where −v is
not specified and does not match historical cpio usage. The hard-link
information is available in the −v display.
The description of the −l option allows implementations to make hard
links to symbolic links. Earlier versions of this standard did not
specify any way to create a hard link to a symbolic link, but many
implementations provided this capability as an extension. If there
are hard links to symbolic links when an archive is created, the
implementation is required to archive the hard link in the archive
(unless −H or −L is specified). When in read mode and in copy mode,
implementations supporting hard links to symbolic links should use
them when appropriate.
The archive formats inherited from the POSIX.1‐1990 standard have
certain restrictions that have been brought along from historical
usage. For example, there are restrictions on the length of pathnames
stored in the archive. When pax is used in copy(−rw) mode (copying
directory hierarchies), the ability to use extensions from the −xpax
format overcomes these restrictions.
The default blocksize value of 5120 bytes for cpio was selected
because it is one of the standard block-size values for cpio, set
when the −B option is specified. (The other default block-size value
for cpio is 512 bytes, and this was considered to be too small.) The
default block value of 10240 bytes for tar was selected because that
is the standard block-size value for BSD tar. The maximum block size
of 32256 bytes (215−512 bytes) is the largest multiple of 512 bytes
that fits into a signed 16-bit tape controller transfer register.
There are known limitations in some historical systems that would
prevent larger blocks from being accepted. Historical values were
chosen to improve compatibility with historical scripts using dd or
similar utilities to manipulate archives. Also, default block sizes
for any file type other than character special file has been deleted
from this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 as unimportant and not likely to
affect the structure of the resulting archive.
Implementations are permitted to modify the block-size value based on
the archive format or the device to which the archive is being
written. This is to provide implementations with the opportunity to
take advantage of special types of devices, and it should not be used
without a great deal of consideration as it almost certainly
decreases archive portability.
The intended use of the −n option was to permit extraction of one or
more files from the archive without processing the entire archive.
This was viewed by the standard developers as offering significant
performance advantages over historical implementations. The −n option
in early proposals had three effects; the first was to cause special
characters in patterns to not be treated specially. The second was to
cause only the first file that matched a pattern to be extracted. The
third was to cause pax to write a diagnostic message to standard
error when no file was found matching a specified pattern. Only the
second behavior is retained by this volume of POSIX.1‐2008, for many
reasons. First, it is in general not acceptable for a single option
to have multiple effects. Second, the ability to make pattern
matching characters act as normal characters is useful for parts of
pax other than file extraction. Third, a finer degree of control over
the special characters is useful because users may wish to normalize
only a single special character in a single filename. Fourth, given a
more general escape mechanism, the previous behavior of the −n option
can be easily obtained using the −s option or a sed script. Finally,
writing a diagnostic message when a pattern specified by the user is
unmatched by any file is useful behavior in all cases.
In this version, the −n was removed from the copy mode synopsis of
pax; it is inapplicable because there are no pattern operands
specified in this mode.
There is another method than pax for copying subtrees in POSIX.1‐2008
described as part of the cp utility. Both methods are historical
practice: cp provides a simpler, more intuitive interface, while pax
offers a finer granularity of control. Each provides additional
functionality to the other; in particular, pax maintains the hard-
link structure of the hierarchy while cp does not. It is the
intention of the standard developers that the results be similar
(using appropriate option combinations in both utilities). The
results are not required to be identical; there seemed insufficient
gain to applications to balance the difficulty of implementations
having to guarantee that the results would be exactly identical.
A single archive may span more than one file. It is suggested that
implementations provide informative messages to the user on standard
error whenever the archive file is changed.
The −d option (do not create intermediate directories not listed in
the archive) found in early proposals was originally provided as a
complement to the historic −d option of cpio. It has been deleted.
The −s option in early proposals specified a subset of the
substitution command from the ed utility. As there was no reason for
only a subset to be supported, the −s option is now compatible with
the current ed specification. Since the delimiter can be any non-null
character, the following usage with single <space> characters is
valid:
pax −s " foo bar " ...
The −t description is worded so as to note that this may cause the
access time update caused by some other activity (which occurs while
the file is being read) to be overwritten.
The default behavior of pax with regard to file modification times is
the same as historical implementations of tar. It is not the
historical behavior of cpio.
Because the −i option uses /dev/tty, utilities without a controlling
terminal are not able to use this option.
The −y option, found in early proposals, has been deleted because a
line containing a single <period> for the −i option has equivalent
functionality. The special lines for the −i option (a single <period>
and the empty line) are historical practice in cpio.
In early drafts, a −echarmap option was included to increase
portability of files between systems using different coded character
sets. This option was omitted because it was apparent that consensus
could not be formed for it. In this version, the use of UTF‐8 should
be an adequate substitute.
The ISO POSIX‐2:1993 standard and ISO POSIX‐1 standard requirements
for pax, however, made it very difficult to create a single archive
containing files created using extended characters provided by
different locales. This version adds the hdrcharset keyword to make
it possible to archive files in these cases without dropping files
due to translation errors.
Translating filenames and other attributes from a locale's encoding
to UTF‐8 and then back again can lose information, as the resulting
filename might not be byte-for-byte equivalent to the original. To
avoid this problem, users can specify the −o hdrcharset=binary
option, which will cause the resulting archive to use binary format
for all names and attributes. Such archives are not portable among
hosts that use different native encodings (e.g., EBCDIC versus ASCII-
based encodings), but they will allow interchange among the vast
majority of POSIX file systems in practical use. Also, the −o
hdrcharset=binary option will cause pax in copy mode to behave more
like other standard utilities such as cp.
If the values specified by the −o exthdr.name=value, −o
globexthdr.name=value, or by $TMPDIR (if −o globexthdr.name is not
specified) require a character encoding other than that described in
the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard, a path extended header record will
have to be created for the file. If a hdrcharset extended header
record is active for such headers, it will determine the codeset used
for the value field in these extended path header records. These path
extended header records always need to be created when writing an
archive even if hdrcharset=binary has been specified and would
contain the same (binary) data that appears in the ustar header
record prefix and name fields. (In other words, an extended header
path record is always required to be generated if the prefix or name
fields contain non-ASCII characters even when hdrcharset=binary is
also in effect for that file.)
The −k option was added to address international concerns about the
dangers involved in the character set transformations of −e (if the
target character set were different from the source, the filenames
might be transformed into names matching existing files) and also was
made more general to protect files transferred between file systems
with different {NAME_MAX} values (truncating a filename on a smaller
system might also inadvertently overwrite existing files). As stated,
it prevents any overwriting, even if the target file is older than
the source. This version adds more granularity of options to solve
this problem by introducing the −oinvalid=option—specifically the
UTF‐8 and binary actions. (Note that an existing file is still
subject to overwriting in this case. The −k option closes that
loophole.)
Some of the file characteristics referenced in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008 might not be supported by some archive formats. For
example, neither the tar nor cpio formats contain the file access
time. For this reason, the e specification character has been
provided, intended to cause all file characteristics specified in the
archive to be retained.
It is required that extracted directories, by default, have their
access and modification times and permissions set to the values
specified in the archive. This has obvious problems in that the
directories are almost certainly modified after being extracted and
that directory permissions may not permit file creation. One possible
solution is to create directories with the mode specified in the
archive, as modified by the umask of the user, with sufficient
permissions to allow file creation. After all files have been
extracted, pax would then reset the access and modification times and
permissions as necessary.
The list-mode formatting description borrows heavily from the one
defined by the printf utility. However, since there is no separate
operand list to get conversion arguments, the format was extended to
allow specifying the name of the conversion argument as part of the
conversion specification.
The T conversion specifier allows time fields to be displayed in any
of the date formats. Unlike the ls utility, pax does not adjust the
format when the date is less than six months in the past. This makes
parsing the output more predictable.
The D conversion specifier handles the ability to display the
major/minor or file size, as with ls, by using %−8(size)D.
The L conversion specifier handles the ls display for symbolic links.
Conversion specifiers were added to generate existing known types
used for ls.
pax Interchange Format
The new POSIX data interchange format was developed primarily to
satisfy international concerns that the ustar and cpio formats did
not provide for file, user, and group names encoded in characters
outside a subset of the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard. The standard
developers realized that this new POSIX data interchange format
should be very extensible because there were other requirements they
foresaw in the near future:
* Support international character encodings and locale information
* Support security information (ACLs, and so on)
* Support future file types, such as realtime or contiguous files
* Include data areas for implementation use
* Support systems with words larger than 32 bits and timers with
subsecond granularity
The following were not goals for this format because these are better
handled by separate utilities or are inappropriate for a portable
format:
* Encryption
* Compression
* Data translation between locales and codesets
* inode storage
The format chosen to support the goals is an extension of the ustar
format. Of the two formats previously available, only the ustar
format was selected for extensions because:
* It was easier to extend in an upwards-compatible way. It offered
version flags and header block type fields with room for future
standardization. The cpio format, while possessing a more
flexible file naming methodology, could not be extended without
breaking some theoretical implementation or using a dummy
filename that could be a legitimate filename.
* Industry experience since the original ``tar wars'' fought in
developing the ISO POSIX‐1 standard has clearly been in favor of
the ustar format, which is generally the default output format
selected for pax implementations on new systems.
The new format was designed with one additional goal in mind:
reasonable behavior when an older tar or pax utility happened to read
an archive. Since the POSIX.1‐1990 standard mandated that a ``format-
reading utility'' had to treat unrecognized typeflag values as
regular files, this allowed the format to include all the extended
information in a pseudo-regular file that preceded each real file. An
option is given that allows the archive creator to set up reasonable
names for these files on the older systems. Also, the normative text
suggests that reasonable file access values be used for this ustar
header block. Making these header files inaccessible for convenient
reading and deleting would not be reasonable. File permissions of 600
or 700 are suggested.
The ustar typeflag field was used to accommodate the additional
functionality of the new format rather than magic or version because
the POSIX.1‐1990 standard (and, by reference, the previous version of
pax), mandated the behavior of the format-reading utility when it
encountered an unknown typeflag, but was silent about the other two
fields.
Early proposals for the first version of this standard contained a
proposed archive format that was based on compatibility with the
standard for tape files (ISO 1001, similar to the format used
historically on many mainframes and minicomputers). This format was
overly complex and required considerable overhead in volume and
header records. Furthermore, the standard developers felt that it
would not be acceptable to the community of POSIX developers, so it
was later changed to be a format more closely related to historical
practice on POSIX systems.
The prefix and name split of pathnames in ustar was replaced by the
single path extended header record for simplicity.
The concept of a global extended header (typeflagg) was
controversial. If this were applied to an archive being recorded on
magnetic tape, a few unreadable blocks at the beginning of the tape
could be a serious problem; a utility attempting to extract as many
files as possible from a damaged archive could lose a large
percentage of file header information in this case. However, if the
archive were on a reliable medium, such as a CD‐ROM, the global
extended header offers considerable potential size reductions by
eliminating redundant information. Thus, the text warns against using
the global method for unreliable media and provides a method for
implanting global information in the extended header for each file,
rather than in the typeflag g records.
No facility for data translation or filtering on a per-file basis is
included because the standard developers could not invent an
interface that would allow this in an efficient manner. If a filter,
such as encryption or compression, is to be applied to all the files,
it is more efficient to apply the filter to the entire archive as a
single file. The standard developers considered interfaces that would
invoke a shell script for each file going into or out of the archive,
but the system overhead in this approach was considered to be too
high.
One such approach would be to have filter= records that give a
pathname for an executable. When the program is invoked, the file and
archive would be open for standard input/output and all the header
fields would be available as environment variables or command-line
arguments. The standard developers did discuss such schemes, but they
were omitted from POSIX.1‐2008 due to concerns about excessive
overhead. Also, the program itself would need to be in the archive if
it were to be used portably.
There is currently no portable means of identifying the character
set(s) used for a file in the file system. Therefore, pax has not
been given a mechanism to generate charset records automatically. The
only portable means of doing this is for the user to write the
archive using the −ocharset=string command line option. This assumes
that all of the files in the archive use the same encoding. The
``implementation-defined'' text is included to allow for a system
that can identify the encodings used for each of its files.
The table of standards that accompanies the charset record
description is acknowledged to be very limited. Only a limited number
of character set standards is reasonable for maximal interchange. Any
character set is, of course, possible by prior agreement. It was
suggested that EBCDIC be listed, but it was omitted because it is not
defined by a formal standard. Formal standards, and then only those
with reasonably large followings, can be included here, simply as a
matter of practicality. The <value>s represent names of officially
registered character sets in the format required by the ISO 2375:1985
standard.
The normal <comma> or <blank>-separated list rules are not followed
in the case of keyword options to allow ease of argument parsing for
getopts.
Further information on character encodings is in pax Archive
Character Set Encoding/Decoding.
The standard developers have reserved keyword name space for vendor
extensions. It is suggested that the format to be used is:
VENDOR.keyword
where VENDOR is the name of the vendor or organization in all
uppercase letters. It is further suggested that the keyword following
the <period> be named differently than any of the standard keywords
so that it could be used for future standardization, if appropriate,
by omitting the VENDOR prefix.
The <length> field in the extended header record was included to make
it simpler to step through the records, even if a record contains an
unknown format (to a particular pax) with complex interactions of
special characters. It also provides a minor integrity checkpoint
within the records to aid a program attempting to recover files from
a damaged archive.
There are no extended header versions of the devmajor and devminor
fields because the unspecified format ustar header field should be
sufficient. If they are not, vendor-specific extended keywords (such
as VENDOR.devmajor) should be used.
Device and i-number labeling of files was not adopted from cpio;
files are interchanged strictly on a symbolic name basis, as in
ustar.
Just as with the ustar format descriptions, the new format makes no
special arrangements for multi-volume archives. Each of the pax
archive types is assumed to be inside a single POSIX file and
splitting that file over multiple volumes (diskettes, tape
cartridges, and so on), processing their labels, and mounting each in
the proper sequence are considered to be implementation details that
cannot be described portably.
The pax format is intended for interchange, not only for backup on a
single (family of) systems. It is not as densely packed as might be
possible for backup:
* It contains information as coded characters that could be coded
in binary.
* It identifies extended records with name fields that could be
omitted in favor of a fixed-field layout.
* It translates names into a portable character set and identifies
locale-related information, both of which are probably
unnecessary for backup.
The requirements on restoring from an archive are slightly different
from the historical wording, allowing for non-monolithic privilege to
bring forward as much as possible. In particular, attributes such as
``high performance file'' might be broadly but not universally
granted while set-user-ID or chown() might be much more restricted.
There is no implication in POSIX.1‐2008 that the security information
be honored after it is restored to the file hierarchy, in spite of
what might be improperly inferred by the silence on that topic. That
is a topic for another standard.
Links are recorded in the fashion described here because a link can
be to any file type. It is desirable in general to be able to restore
part of an archive selectively and restore all of those files
completely. If the data is not associated with each link, it is not
possible to do this. However, the data associated with a file can be
large, and when selective restoration is not needed, this can be a
significant burden. The archive is structured so that files that
have no associated data can always be restored by the name of any
link name of any link, and the user may choose whether data is
recorded with each instance of a file that contains data. The format
permits mixing of both types of links in a single archive; this can
be done for special needs, and pax is expected to interpret such
archives on input properly, despite the fact that there is no pax
option that would force this mixed case on output. (When −o linkdata
is used, the output must contain the duplicate data, but the
implementation is free to include it or omit it when −o linkdata is
not used.)
The time values are included as extended header records for those
implementations needing more than the eleven octal digits allowed by
the ustar format. Portable file timestamps cannot be negative. If pax
encounters a file with a negative timestamp in copy or write mode, it
can reject the file, substitute a non-negative timestamp, or generate
a non-portable timestamp with a leading '−'. Even though some
implementations can support finer file-time granularities than
seconds, the normative text requires support only for seconds since
the Epoch because the ISO POSIX‐1 standard states them that way. The
ustar format includes only mtime; the new format adds atime and ctime
for symmetry. The atime access time restored to the file system will
be affected by the −p a and −p e options. The ctime creation time
(actually inode modification time) is described with appropriate
privileges so that it can be ignored when writing to the file system.
POSIX does not provide a portable means to change file creation time.
Nothing is intended to prevent a non-portable implementation of pax
from restoring the value.
The gid, size, and uid extended header records were included to allow
expansion beyond the sizes specified in the regular tar header. New
file system architectures are emerging that will exhaust the 12-digit
size field. There are probably not many systems requiring more than 8
digits for user and group IDs, but the extended header values were
included for completeness, allowing overrides for all of the decimal
values in the tar header.
The standard developers intended to describe the effective results of
pax with regard to file ownerships and permissions; implementations
are not restricted in timing or sequencing the restoration of such,
provided the results are as specified.
Much of the text describing the extended headers refers to use in
``write or copy modes''. The copy mode references are due to the
normative text: ``The effect of the copy shall be as if the copied
files were written to an archive file and then subsequently extracted
...''. There is certainly no way to test whether pax is actually
generating the extended headers in copy mode, but the effects must be
as if it had.
pax Archive Character Set Encoding/Decoding
There is a need to exchange archives of files between systems of
different native codesets. Filenames, group names, and user names
must be preserved to the fullest extent possible when an archive is
read on the receiving platform. Translation of the contents of files
is not within the scope of the pax utility.
There will also be the need to represent characters that are not
available on the receiving platform. These unsupported characters
cannot be automatically folded to the local set of characters due to
the chance of collisions. This could result in overwriting previous
extracted files from the archive or pre-existing files on the system.
For these reasons, the codeset used to represent characters within
the extended header records of the pax archive must be sufficiently
rich to handle all commonly used character sets. The fields requiring
translation include, at a minimum, filenames, user names, group
names, and link pathnames. Implementations may wish to have localized
extended keywords that use non-portable characters.
The standard developers considered the following options:
* The archive creator specifies the well-defined name of the source
codeset. The receiver must then recognize the codeset name and
perform the appropriate translations to the destination codeset.
* The archive creator includes within the archive the character
mapping table for the source codeset used to encode extended
header records. The receiver must then read the character
mapping table and perform the appropriate translations to the
destination codeset.
* The archive creator translates the extended header records in the
source codeset into a canonical form. The receiver must then
perform the appropriate translations to the destination codeset.
The approach that incorporates the name of the source codeset poses
the problem of codeset name registration, and makes the archive
useless to pax archive decoders that do not recognize that codeset.
Because parts of an archive may be corrupted, the standard developers
felt that including the character map of the source codeset was too
fragile. The loss of this one key component could result in making
the entire archive useless. (The difference between this and the
global extended header decision was that the latter has a workaround—
duplicating extended header records on unreliable media—but this
would be too burdensome for large character set maps.)
Both of the above approaches also put an undue burden on the pax
archive receiver to handle the cross-product of all source and
destination codesets.
To simplify the translation from the source codeset to the canonical
form and from the canonical form to the destination codeset, the
standard developers decided that the internal representation should
be a stateless encoding. A stateless encoding is one where each
codepoint has the same meaning, without regard to the decoder being
in a specific state. An example of a stateful encoding would be the
Japanese Shift-JIS; an example of a stateless encoding would be the
ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard (equivalent to 7-bit ASCII).
For these reasons, the standard developers decided to adopt a
canonical format for the representation of file information strings.
The obvious, well-endorsed candidate is the ISO/IEC 10646‐1:2000
standard (based in part on Unicode), which can be used to represent
the characters of virtually all standardized character sets. The
standard developers initially agreed upon using UCS2 (16-bit Unicode)
as the internal representation. This repertoire of characters
provides a sufficiently rich set to represent all commonly-used
codesets.
However, the standard developers found that the 16-bit Unicode
representation had some problems. It forced the issue of
standardizing byte ordering. The 2-byte length of each character made
the extended header records twice as long for the case of strings
coded entirely from historical 7-bit ASCII. For these reasons, the
standard developers chose the UTF‐8 defined in the
ISO/IEC 10646‐1:2000 standard. This multi-byte representation encodes
UCS2 or UCS4 characters reliably and deterministically, eliminating
the need for a canonical byte ordering. In addition, NUL octets and
other characters possibly confusing to POSIX file systems do not
appear, except to represent themselves. It was realized that certain
national codesets take up more space after the encoding, due to their
placement within the UCS range; it was felt that the usefulness of
the encoding of the names outweighs the disadvantage of size increase
for file, user, and group names.
The encoding of UTF‐8 is as follows:
UCS4 Hex Encoding UTF-8 Binary Encoding
00000000-0000007F 0xxxxxxx
00000080-000007FF 110xxxxx 10xxxxxx
00000800-0000FFFF 1110xxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
00010000-001FFFFF 11110xxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
00200000-03FFFFFF 111110xx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
04000000-7FFFFFFF 1111110x 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx 10xxxxxx
where each 'x' represents a bit value from the character being
translated.
ustar Interchange Format
The description of the ustar format reflects numerous enhancements
over pre-1988 versions of the historical tar utility. The goal of
these changes was not only to provide the functional enhancements
desired, but also to retain compatibility between new and old
versions. This compatibility has been retained. Archives written
using the old archive format are compatible with the new format.
Implementors should be aware that the previous file format did not
include a mechanism to archive directory type files. For this reason,
the convention of using a filename ending with <slash> was adopted to
specify a directory on the archive.
The total size of the name and prefix fields have been set to meet
the minimum requirements for {PATH_MAX}. If a pathname will fit
within the name field, it is recommended that the pathname be stored
there without the use of the prefix field. Although the name field is
known to be too small to contain {PATH_MAX} characters, the value was
not changed in this version of the archive file format to retain
backwards-compatibility, and instead the prefix was introduced. Also,
because of the earlier version of the format, there is no way to
remove the restriction on the linkname field being limited in size to
just that of the name field.
The size field is required to be meaningful in all implementation
extensions, although it could be zero. This is required so that the
data blocks can always be properly counted.
It is suggested that if device special files need to be represented
that cannot be represented in the standard format, that one of the
extension types (A‐Z) be used, and that the additional information
for the special file be represented as data and be reflected in the
size field.
Attempting to restore a special file type, where it is converted to
ordinary data and conflicts with an existing filename, need not be
specially detected by the utility. If run as an ordinary user, pax
should not be able to overwrite the entries in, for example, /dev in
any case (whether the file is converted to another type or not). If
run as a privileged user, it should be able to do so, and it would be
considered a bug if it did not. The same is true of ordinary data
files and similarly named special files; it is impossible to
anticipate the needs of the user (who could really intend to
overwrite the file), so the behavior should be predictable (and thus
regular) and rely on the protection system as required.
The value 7 in the typeflag field is intended to define how
contiguous files can be stored in a ustar archive. POSIX.1‐2008 does
not require the contiguous file extension, but does define a standard
way of archiving such files so that all conforming systems can
interpret these file types in a meaningful and consistent manner. On
a system that does not support extended file types, the pax utility
should do the best it can with the file and go on to the next.
The file protection modes are those conventionally used by the ls
utility. This is extended beyond the usage in the ISO POSIX‐2
standard to support the ``shared text'' or ``sticky'' bit. It is
intended that the conformance document should not document anything
beyond the existence of and support of such a mode. Further
extensions are expected to these bits, particularly with overloading
the set-user-ID and set-group-ID flags.
cpio Interchange Format
The reference to appropriate privileges in the cpio format refers to
an error on standard output; the ustar format does not make
comparable statements.
The model for this format was the historical System V cpio−c data
interchange format. This model documents the portable version of the
cpio format and not the binary version. It has the flexibility to
transfer data of any type described within POSIX.1‐2008, yet is
extensible to transfer data types specific to extensions beyond
POSIX.1‐2008 (for example, contiguous files). Because it describes
existing practice, there is no question of maintaining upwards-
compatibility.
cpio Header
There has been some concern that the size of the c_ino field of the
header is too small to handle those systems that have very large
inode numbers. However, the c_ino field in the header is used
strictly as a hard-link resolution mechanism for archives. It is not
necessarily the same value as the inode number of the file in the
location from which that file is extracted.
The name c_magic is based on historical usage.
cpio Filename
For most historical implementations of the cpio utility, {PATH_MAX}
octets can be used to describe the pathname without the addition of
any other header fields (the NUL character would be included in this
count). {PATH_MAX} is the minimum value for pathname size,
documented as 256 bytes. However, an implementation may use
c_namesize to determine the exact length of the pathname. With the
current description of the <cpio.h> header, this pathname size can be
as large as a number that is described in six octal digits.
Two values are documented under the c_mode field values to provide
for extensibility for known file types:
0110 000 Reserved for contiguous files. The implementation may treat
the rest of the information for this archive like a regular
file. If this file type is undefined, the implementation
may create the file as a regular file.
This provides for extensibility of the cpio format while allowing for
the ability to read old archives. Files of an unknown type may be
read as ``regular files'' on some implementations. On a system that
does not support extended file types, the pax utility should do the
best it can with the file and go on to the next.
None.
Chapter 2, Shell Command Language, cp(1p), ed(1p), getopts(1p),
ls(1p), printf(1p)
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 3.169, File Mode
Bits, Chapter 5, File Format Notation, Chapter 8, Environment
Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, cpio.h(0p)
The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008, chown(3p), creat(3p),
fstatat(3p), mkdir(3p), mkfifo(3p), utime(3p), write(3p)
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 PAX(1P)
Pages that refer to this page: cpio.h(0p), tar.h(0p), ar(1p), cp(1p), file(1p), find(1p), ln(1p)