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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TAR(1) General Commands Manual TAR(1)
NAME
tar - archiver
SYNOPSIS
tar key [ file ... ]
DESCRIPTION
Tar saves and restores file trees. It is most often used to transport a tree of files from one system to another. The key is a string
that contains at most one function letter plus optional modifiers. Other arguments to the command are names of files or directories to be
dumped or restored. A directory name implies all the contained files and subdirectories (recursively).
The function is one of the following letters:
c Create a new archive with the given files as contents.
x Extract the named files from the archive. If a file is a directory, the directory is extracted recursively. Modes are restored if
possible. If no file argument is given, extract the entire archive. If the archive contains multiple entries for a file, the lat-
est one wins.
t List all occurrences of each file in the archive, or of all files if there are no file arguments.
r The named files are appended to the archive.
The modifiers are:
v (verbose) Print the name of each file treated preceded by the function letter. With t, give more details about the archive entries.
f Use the next argument as the name of the archive instead of the default standard input (for keys x and t) or standard output (for
keys c and r).
u Use the next (numeric) argument as the user id for files in the output archive. This is only useful when moving files to a non-Plan
9 system.
g Use the next (numeric) argument as the group id for files in the output archive.
EXAMPLES
Tar can be used to copy hierarchies thus:
{cd fromdir; tar c .} | {cd todir; tar x}
SOURCE
/sys/src/cmd/tar.c
SEE ALSO
ar(1), bundle(1), tapefs(1)
BUGS
There is no way to ask for any but the last occurrence of a file.
File path names are limited to 100 characters.
The tar format allows specification of links and symbolic links, concepts foreign to Plan 9: they are ignored.
TAR(1)