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Full Discussion: tar the symbolic link
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting tar the symbolic link Post 302198550 by nua7 on Friday 23rd of May 2008 07:11:23 AM
Old 05-23-2008
Normally, when tar archives a symbolic link, it writes a record to the archive naming the target of the link. In that way, the tar archive is a faithful record of the filesystem contents. `--dereference' (`-h') is used with `--create' (`-c'), and causes tar to archive the files symbolic links point to, instead of the links themselves. When this option is used, when tar encounters a symbolic link, it will archive the linked-to file, instead of simply recording the presence of a symbolic link.

The name under which the file is stored in the file system is not recorded in the archive. To record both the symbolic link name and the file name in the system, archive the file under both names. If all links were recorded automatically by tar, an extracted file might be linked to a file name that no longer exists in the file system.

If a linked-to file is encountered again by tar while creating the same archive, an entire second copy of it will be stored. (This might be considered a bug.)

So, for portable archives, do not archive symbolic links as such, and use `--dereference' (`-h'): many systems do not support symbolic links, and moreover, your distribution might be unusable if it contains unresolved symbolic links.
 

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CPIO(1) 						    BSD General Commands Manual 						   CPIO(1)

NAME
cpio -- copy file archives in and out SYNOPSIS
cpio -o [-AaBcLvZz] [-C bytes] [-F archive] [-H format] [-O archive] < name-list [> archive] cpio -i [-6BbcdfmrSstuvZz] [-C bytes] [-E file] [-F archive] [-H format] [-I archive] [pattern ...] [< archive] cpio -p [-adLlmuv] destination-directory < name-list DESCRIPTION
The cpio command copies files to and from a cpio archive. If the archive is of the form: [[user@]host:]file then the archive will be pro- cessed using rmt(8). The options are as follows: -o, --create Create an archive. Reads the list of files to store in the archive from standard input, and writes the archive on standard output. -a, --reset-access-time Reset the access times on files that have been copied to the archive. -A, --append Append to the specified archive. -B Set block size of output to 5120 bytes. -c Use ASCII format for cpio header for portability. -C bytes Set the block size of output to bytes. -F archive -O archive Use the specified file name as the archive to write to. -H format Write the archive in the specified format. Recognized formats are: bcpio Old binary cpio format. cpio Old octal character cpio format. sv4cpio SVR4 hex cpio format. tar Old tar format. ustar POSIX ustar format. -L Follow symbolic links. -v Be verbose about operations. List filenames as they are written to the archive. --xz Compress/decompress archive using xz(1) format. -Z Compress archive using compress(1) format. -z Compress/decompress archive using gzip(1) format. -i, --extract Restore files from an archive. Reads the archive file from standard input and extracts files matching the patterns that were speci- fied on the command line. -b Do byte and word swapping after reading in data from the archive, for restoring archives created on systems with a different byte order. -B Set the block size of the archive being read to 5120 bytes. -c Expect the archive headers to be in ASCII format. -C bytes Read archive written with a block size of bytes. -d, --make-directories Create any intermediate directories as needed during restore. -E file, --pattern-file file Read list of file name patterns to extract or list from file. -f, --nonmatching Restore all files except those matching the patterns given on the command line. -F archive, --file archive -I archive Use the specified file as the input for the archive. -H format, --format format Read an archive of the specified format. Recognized formats are: bcpio Old binary cpio format. cpio Old octal character cpio format. sv4cpio SVR4 hex cpio format. tar Old tar format. ustar POSIX ustar format. -m Restore modification times on files. -r, --rename Rename restored files interactively. -s Swap bytes after reading data from the archive. -S, --swap-halfwords Swap words after reading data from the archive. -t, --list Only list the contents of the archive, no files or directories will be created. -u, --unconditional Overwrite files even when the file in the archive is older than the one that will be overwritten. -v, --verbose Be verbose about operations. List filenames as they are copied in from the archive. -z Uncompress archive using gzip(1) format. -Z Uncompress archive using compress(1) format. -6 Process old-style cpio format archives. -p, --pass-through Copy files from one location to another in a single pass. The list of files to copy are read from standard input and written out to a directory relative to the specified directory argument. -a Reset the access times on files that have been copied. -d Create any intermediate directories as needed to write the files at the new location. -l, --link When possible, link files rather than creating an extra copy. -L, --dereference Follow symbolic links. -m, --preserve-modification-time Restore modification times on files. -u, --unconditional Overwrite files even when the original file being copied is older than the one that will be overwritten. -v, --verbose Be verbose about operations. List filenames as they are copied. --force-local Do not interpret filenames that contain a ':' as remote files. --insecure Normally cpio ignores filenames that contain ``..'' as a path component. With this option, files that contain ``..'' can be processed. EXIT STATUS
cpio will exit with one of the following values: 0 All files were processed successfully. 1 An error occurred. Whenever cpio cannot create a file or a link when extracting an archive or cannot find a file while writing an archive, or cannot preserve the user ID, group ID, file mode, or access and modification times when the -p option is specified, a diagnostic message is written to stan- dard error and a non-zero exit value will be returned, but processing will continue. In the case where cpio cannot create a link to a file, cpio will not create a second copy of the file. If the extraction of a file from an archive is prematurely terminated by a signal or error, cpio may have only partially extracted the file the user wanted. Additionally, the file modes of extracted files and directories may have incorrect file bits, and the modification and access times may be wrong. If the creation of an archive is prematurely terminated by a signal or error, cpio may have only partially created the archive which may vio- late the specific archive format specification. SEE ALSO
pax(1), tar(1) AUTHORS
Keith Muller at the University of California, San Diego. BUGS
The -s and -S options are currently not implemented. BSD
June 18, 2011 BSD
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