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TAR(1) General Commands Manual TAR(1) NAME tar - tape archiver SYNOPSIS tar key [ file ... ] DESCRIPTION Tar saves and restores files, normally on magnetic on tape. The key is a string that contains at most one function letter plus optional modi- fiers. Other arguments to the command are names of files or directo- ries to be dumped or restored. A directory name implies all the con- tained files and subdirectories (recursively). The function is one of the following letters: r The named files are written on the end of the tape. x Extract the named files from the tape. If a file is a direc- tory, the directory is extracted recursively. Owners and modes are restored if possible. If no file argument is given, extract the entire tape. If the tape contains multiple entries for a file, the latest one wins. t List all occurrences of each file on tape, or of all files if there are no file arguments. u Add the named files if they are not on the tape or are newer than the tape version. c Create a new tape; writing begins at the beginning of the tape instead of after the last file. o Omit owner and modes of directories, for compatibility with old versions of tar. p Restore files to their original modes, ignoring the present umask(2). Setuid and sticky information will be restored when tar is executed by the super-user. The modifiers are: 0,...,7 Select a tape drive. The default is 1. Incompatible with modi- fier f. v (verbose) Print the name of each file treated preceded by the function letter. With t, give more details about the tape en- tries. w Print the action to be taken followed by file name, then wait for user confirmation. If the answer begins with the action is performed. Any other input means don't do it. f Use the next argument as the name of the archive instead of the default If the name of the file is tar writes to standard output or reads from standard input, whichever is appropriate. Tar can be used to move hierarchies thus: (cd fromdir; tar cf - .) | (cd todir; tar xf -) b Write output in nx512-byte blocks, where n is the next argument, default 20, maximum 40. Useful for raw magnetic tape archives (see f above); destructive for disk archives. l Complain if links cannot be resolved. If l is not specified, no error messages are printed. L Write information needed to re-create symbolic links on the tape instead of following the links. Tapes thus written cannot be read on older versions of tar . FILES SEE ALSO cpio(1), bundle(1), mt(4) BUGS There is no way to ask for any but the last occurrence of a file. Tape errors are handled ungracefully. The u option can be slow, and works only with archives on disk files. File names are limited to 100 characters. TAR(1)