1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2012-12-18
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
9 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
10 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
11 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
12 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
14 * --owner and --group names and numbers
16 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
17 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
18 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
19 present in the current host's user and group databases.
21 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
23 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
24 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
25 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
26 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
27 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
29 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
30 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
31 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
32 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
33 together with this option.
35 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
37 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
38 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
39 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
40 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
41 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
42 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
43 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
46 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
49 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
53 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
55 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
57 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
59 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
62 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
64 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
66 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
67 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
70 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
72 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
73 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
74 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
76 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
77 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
78 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
80 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
82 * Improve the testsuite.
84 * Alternative decompression programs.
86 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
87 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
88 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
90 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
92 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
93 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
95 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
98 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
100 * The --full-time option.
102 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
103 time stamps to the full resolution.
107 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
109 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
110 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
111 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
112 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
113 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
114 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
116 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
117 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
118 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
119 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
121 ** Symbolic link attributes
123 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
124 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
125 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
126 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
129 ** --dereference consistency
131 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
132 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
133 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
134 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
135 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
136 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
137 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
138 the implementation was not consistent.
140 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
141 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
142 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
145 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
147 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
148 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
149 invoked as in the example below:
151 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
155 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
156 symlinks to another files within that directory.
158 ** --test-label behavior
160 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
161 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
163 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
166 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
168 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
170 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
171 matches the actual volume label.
173 ** --label used with --update
175 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
176 update of an archive:
178 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
180 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
182 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
184 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
185 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
187 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
190 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
192 * Record size autodetection
194 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
195 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
196 to regular files and pipes).
200 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
201 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
203 * New command line option '--warning'
205 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
206 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
207 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
208 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
209 messages are suppressed. For example,
211 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
213 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
214 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
216 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
219 * New command line option '--level'
221 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
222 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
223 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
224 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
225 the snapshot file if it exists.
227 * Files removed during incremental dumps
229 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
230 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
231 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
232 during file system scan.
234 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
235 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
238 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
239 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
240 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
241 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
242 is issued and exit code remains 0.
244 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
246 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
247 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
248 can be overridden by the
250 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
252 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
253 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
255 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
256 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
258 This can be overridden by the
260 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
262 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
263 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
265 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
267 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
268 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
269 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
270 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
271 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
272 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
274 * Environment of --to-command script.
276 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
277 the following variables:
279 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
280 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
281 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
282 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
283 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
286 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
287 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
288 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
289 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
290 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
291 succesfully stored in the archive.
292 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
293 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
295 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
298 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
300 * Support for xz compression
302 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
304 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
305 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
306 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
307 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
309 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
311 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
312 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
313 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
315 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
319 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
320 --use-compress-program.
322 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
325 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
327 * New short option -J
329 A shortcut for --lzma.
333 * New option --no-auto-compress
335 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
337 * New option --no-null
339 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
341 * Compressed format recognition
343 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
344 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
348 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
351 * Transformation scope flags
353 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
354 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
357 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
360 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
363 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
365 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
366 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
368 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
371 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
373 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
374 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
375 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
376 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
378 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
382 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
384 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
385 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
386 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
387 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
391 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
393 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
395 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
396 of the archive file name.
400 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
402 * New option --hard-dereference
404 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
405 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
407 * New option --checkpoint-action
409 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
410 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
411 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
412 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
413 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
414 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
416 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
418 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
419 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
420 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
423 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
424 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
425 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
426 environment variable.
428 * The --transform option.
430 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
431 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
433 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
434 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
436 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
437 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
440 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
443 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
445 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
446 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
448 * Incremental archives
450 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
453 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
457 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
459 * New option --exclude-vcs
461 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
462 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
464 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
466 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
474 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
476 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
477 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
478 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
481 * Fix --version output.
483 * Recognition of broken archives.
485 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
486 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
487 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
488 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
490 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
492 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
495 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
497 * Licensed under the GPLv3
499 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
502 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
504 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
505 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
507 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
508 a full dump when both options were given.
510 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
511 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
513 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
515 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
516 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
517 option affects hard link targets as well.
519 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
520 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
523 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
525 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
526 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
529 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
530 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
531 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
532 still added to the archive.
534 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
535 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
536 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
537 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
538 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
539 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
540 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
542 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
543 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
544 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
547 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
549 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
550 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
551 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
553 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
554 members during creation.
557 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
558 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
559 the listing to stderr.
562 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
564 * Incompatible changes
568 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
569 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
573 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
574 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
575 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
576 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
577 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
580 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
581 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
582 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
584 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
585 following command line options:
587 --wildcards use wildcards
588 --anchored patterns match file name start
589 --ignore-case ignore case
590 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
592 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
593 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
595 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
596 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
597 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
599 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
600 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
602 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
603 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
604 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
605 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
607 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
609 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
610 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
614 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
615 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
616 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
618 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
620 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
622 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
623 versions it worked only with --extract.
625 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
626 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
627 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
628 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
629 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
630 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
632 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
633 as well as that about directories.
635 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
636 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
637 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
640 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
641 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
642 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
643 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
644 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
647 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
650 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
654 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
655 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
656 including another -T option.
657 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
658 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
659 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
660 dash, use the --add-file option.
662 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
663 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
665 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
666 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
667 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
669 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
670 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
671 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
674 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
675 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
677 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
678 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
679 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
680 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
682 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
685 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
686 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
689 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
690 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
691 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
692 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
693 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
695 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
696 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
698 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
699 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
700 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
701 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
702 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
703 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
704 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
706 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
707 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
708 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
709 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
711 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
712 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
713 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
714 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
716 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
717 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
718 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
722 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
723 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
724 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
725 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
726 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
727 was not processed correctly.
728 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
730 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
731 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
733 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
734 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
735 (for ustar and v7 formats).
736 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
737 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
738 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
739 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
743 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
745 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
746 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
749 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
751 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
752 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
753 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
755 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
756 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
759 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
760 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
761 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
762 back up. This change fixes the bug.
764 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
767 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
770 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
771 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
773 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
774 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
776 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
777 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
778 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
780 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
782 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
783 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
784 introduced in version 1.14
786 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
787 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
788 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
789 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
790 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
793 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
794 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
795 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
796 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
797 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
798 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
799 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
800 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
801 extracted copy in such cases.
802 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
803 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
804 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
805 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
806 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
807 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
808 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
811 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
813 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
814 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
815 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
816 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
817 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
818 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
819 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
821 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
822 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
823 the previous default behavior.
825 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
826 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
827 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
828 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
831 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
832 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
833 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
834 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
835 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
837 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
838 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
839 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
840 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
841 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
842 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
843 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
845 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
846 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
849 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
850 individual files, as well as on directories.
852 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
853 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
854 option is given to configure.
856 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
857 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
858 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
859 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
860 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
861 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
862 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
863 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
864 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
866 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
867 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
870 * Removed obsolete command line options:
871 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
872 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
873 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
874 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
875 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
876 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
877 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
879 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
880 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
881 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
882 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
887 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
892 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
894 * New option --overwrite-dir.
895 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
896 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
899 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
901 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
904 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
909 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
911 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
914 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
916 * Some bugs were fixed:
918 - hard links to symbolic links
920 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
922 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
923 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
924 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
925 exclude patterns are interpreted.
927 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
928 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
929 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
930 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
931 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
932 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
933 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
934 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
936 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
937 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
938 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
941 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
943 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
944 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
946 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
947 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
950 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
952 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
953 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
954 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
956 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
957 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
959 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
961 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
963 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
965 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
967 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
968 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
970 * New language supported: da.
972 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
973 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
975 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
976 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
978 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
981 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
983 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
984 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
987 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
989 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
990 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
991 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
992 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
993 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
994 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
995 longstanding security problems.
997 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
999 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1000 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1001 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1002 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1003 extracting a new directory.
1005 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1006 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1007 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1009 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1010 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1012 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1013 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1014 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1015 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1016 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1017 names have multibyte chars.
1019 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1020 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1021 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1022 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1023 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1024 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1025 are also escaped as needed.
1027 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1028 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1031 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1033 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1034 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1037 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1039 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1040 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1041 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1044 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1046 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1047 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1048 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1049 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1052 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1054 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1056 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1058 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1060 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1061 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1062 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1063 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1064 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1065 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1066 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1067 and which rejects large files.
1069 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1070 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1071 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1072 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1074 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1075 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1076 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1078 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1080 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1083 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1085 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1086 for compatibility with paxutils.
1088 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1089 if no explicit operands were given.
1091 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1092 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1093 even if they begin with '-'.
1095 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1096 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1097 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1098 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1099 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1100 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1103 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1105 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1106 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1107 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1110 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1112 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1113 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1115 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1118 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1119 numeric header field.
1122 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1124 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1125 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1126 the original file or directory.
1129 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1131 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1133 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1134 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1136 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1139 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1141 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1142 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1143 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1145 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1146 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1147 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1148 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1149 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1150 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1152 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1153 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1154 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1155 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1157 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1158 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1159 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1161 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1163 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1166 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1168 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1171 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1173 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1174 this matches historical practice.
1177 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1179 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1180 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1181 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1184 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1186 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1189 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1193 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1195 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1196 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1197 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1198 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1199 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1200 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1201 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1202 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1203 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1204 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1205 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1207 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1210 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1211 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1214 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1215 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1216 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1217 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1220 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1221 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1222 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1223 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1224 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1225 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1228 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1229 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1230 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1231 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1232 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1233 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1234 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1235 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1236 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1239 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1240 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1241 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1242 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1243 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1244 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1245 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1246 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1248 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1250 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1252 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1253 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1254 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1255 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1256 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1258 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1260 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1262 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1263 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1264 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1267 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1269 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1271 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1272 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1273 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1274 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1276 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1278 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1280 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1283 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1285 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1287 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1289 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1293 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1294 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1295 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1296 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1297 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1301 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1303 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1304 for it will eventually be removed.
1306 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1307 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1309 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1310 after they are added to the archive.
1312 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1315 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1316 is being read or written.
1318 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1319 omitted from the archive.
1321 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1322 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1324 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1325 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1327 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1328 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1329 around to the beginning.
1331 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1332 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1333 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1335 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1336 their original values after dumping the file.
1338 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1341 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1342 modification and access times.
1344 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1345 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1346 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1349 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1351 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1352 +newer-mtime work right.
1354 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1356 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1358 * +volume is now called +label.
1360 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1361 what +exclude used to do.
1363 * Exit status is now correct.
1365 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1367 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1369 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1370 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1371 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1373 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1374 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1375 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1376 all our backups at the FSF.
1378 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1379 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1380 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1382 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1386 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003,
1387 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1389 This file is part of GNU tar.
1391 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1392 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1393 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
1396 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1397 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1398 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1399 GNU General Public License for more details.
1401 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1402 along with tar; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
1403 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
1404 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
1408 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1409 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1410 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1411 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1412 time-stamp-end: "\n"