1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2013-02-10
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
9 ** Sparse files with large data
11 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
12 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
16 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
17 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
18 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
19 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
21 * --owner and --group names and numbers
23 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
24 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
25 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
26 present in the current host's user and group databases.
28 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
30 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
31 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
32 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
33 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
34 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
36 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
37 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
38 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
39 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
40 together with this option.
42 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
44 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
45 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
46 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
47 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
48 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
49 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
50 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
53 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
55 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
56 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
57 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
59 --checkpoint-action=exec
60 -I, --use-compress-program
64 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
65 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
66 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
67 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
69 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
71 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
74 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
78 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
80 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
82 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
84 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
87 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
89 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
91 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
92 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
95 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
97 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
98 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
99 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
101 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
102 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
103 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
105 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
107 * Improve the testsuite.
109 * Alternative decompression programs.
111 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
112 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
113 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
115 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
117 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
118 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
120 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
123 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
125 * The --full-time option.
127 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
128 time stamps to the full resolution.
132 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
134 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
135 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
136 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
137 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
138 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
139 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
141 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
142 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
143 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
144 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
146 ** Symbolic link attributes
148 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
149 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
150 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
151 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
154 ** --dereference consistency
156 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
157 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
158 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
159 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
160 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
161 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
162 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
163 the implementation was not consistent.
165 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
166 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
167 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
170 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
172 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
173 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
174 invoked as in the example below:
176 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
180 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
181 symlinks to another files within that directory.
183 ** --test-label behavior
185 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
186 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
188 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
191 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
193 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
195 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
196 matches the actual volume label.
198 ** --label used with --update
200 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
201 update of an archive:
203 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
205 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
207 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
209 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
210 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
212 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
215 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
217 * Record size autodetection
219 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
220 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
221 to regular files and pipes).
225 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
226 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
228 * New command line option '--warning'
230 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
231 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
232 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
233 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
234 messages are suppressed. For example,
236 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
238 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
239 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
241 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
244 * New command line option '--level'
246 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
247 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
248 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
249 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
250 the snapshot file if it exists.
252 * Files removed during incremental dumps
254 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
255 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
256 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
257 during file system scan.
259 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
260 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
263 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
264 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
265 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
266 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
267 is issued and exit code remains 0.
269 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
271 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
272 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
273 can be overridden by the
275 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
277 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
278 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
280 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
281 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
283 This can be overridden by the
285 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
287 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
288 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
290 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
292 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
293 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
294 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
295 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
296 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
297 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
299 * Environment of --to-command script.
301 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
302 the following variables:
304 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
305 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
306 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
307 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
308 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
311 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
312 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
313 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
314 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
315 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
316 succesfully stored in the archive.
317 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
318 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
320 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
323 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
325 * Support for xz compression
327 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
329 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
330 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
331 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
332 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
334 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
336 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
337 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
338 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
340 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
344 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
345 --use-compress-program.
347 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
350 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
352 * New short option -J
354 A shortcut for --lzma.
358 * New option --no-auto-compress
360 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
362 * New option --no-null
364 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
366 * Compressed format recognition
368 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
369 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
373 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
376 * Transformation scope flags
378 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
379 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
382 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
385 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
388 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
390 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
391 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
393 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
396 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
398 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
399 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
400 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
401 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
403 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
407 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
409 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
410 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
411 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
412 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
416 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
418 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
420 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
421 of the archive file name.
425 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
427 * New option --hard-dereference
429 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
430 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
432 * New option --checkpoint-action
434 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
435 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
436 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
437 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
438 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
439 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
441 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
443 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
444 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
445 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
448 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
449 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
450 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
451 environment variable.
453 * The --transform option.
455 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
456 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
458 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
459 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
461 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
462 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
465 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
468 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
470 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
471 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
473 * Incremental archives
475 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
478 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
482 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
484 * New option --exclude-vcs
486 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
487 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
489 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
491 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
499 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
501 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
502 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
503 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
506 * Fix --version output.
508 * Recognition of broken archives.
510 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
511 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
512 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
513 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
515 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
517 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
520 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
522 * Licensed under the GPLv3
524 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
527 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
529 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
530 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
532 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
533 a full dump when both options were given.
535 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
536 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
538 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
540 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
541 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
542 option affects hard link targets as well.
544 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
545 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
548 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
550 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
551 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
554 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
555 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
556 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
557 still added to the archive.
559 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
560 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
561 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
562 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
563 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
564 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
565 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
567 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
568 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
569 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
572 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
574 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
575 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
576 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
578 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
579 members during creation.
582 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
583 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
584 the listing to stderr.
587 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
589 * Incompatible changes
593 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
594 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
598 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
599 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
600 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
601 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
602 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
605 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
606 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
607 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
609 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
610 following command line options:
612 --wildcards use wildcards
613 --anchored patterns match file name start
614 --ignore-case ignore case
615 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
617 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
618 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
620 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
621 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
622 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
624 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
625 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
627 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
628 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
629 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
630 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
632 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
634 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
635 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
639 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
640 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
641 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
643 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
645 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
647 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
648 versions it worked only with --extract.
650 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
651 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
652 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
653 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
654 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
655 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
657 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
658 as well as that about directories.
660 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
661 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
662 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
665 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
666 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
667 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
668 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
669 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
672 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
675 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
679 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
680 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
681 including another -T option.
682 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
683 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
684 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
685 dash, use the --add-file option.
687 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
688 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
690 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
691 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
692 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
694 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
695 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
696 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
699 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
700 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
702 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
703 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
704 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
705 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
707 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
710 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
711 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
714 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
715 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
716 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
717 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
718 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
720 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
721 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
723 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
724 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
725 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
726 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
727 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
728 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
729 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
731 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
732 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
733 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
734 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
736 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
737 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
738 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
739 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
741 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
742 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
743 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
747 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
748 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
749 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
750 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
751 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
752 was not processed correctly.
753 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
755 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
756 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
758 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
759 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
760 (for ustar and v7 formats).
761 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
762 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
763 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
764 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
768 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
770 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
771 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
774 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
776 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
777 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
778 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
780 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
781 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
784 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
785 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
786 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
787 back up. This change fixes the bug.
789 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
792 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
795 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
796 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
798 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
799 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
801 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
802 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
803 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
805 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
807 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
808 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
809 introduced in version 1.14
811 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
812 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
813 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
814 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
815 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
818 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
819 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
820 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
821 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
822 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
823 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
824 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
825 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
826 extracted copy in such cases.
827 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
828 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
829 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
830 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
831 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
832 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
833 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
836 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
838 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
839 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
840 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
841 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
842 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
843 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
844 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
846 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
847 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
848 the previous default behavior.
850 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
851 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
852 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
853 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
856 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
857 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
858 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
859 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
860 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
862 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
863 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
864 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
865 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
866 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
867 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
868 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
870 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
871 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
874 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
875 individual files, as well as on directories.
877 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
878 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
879 option is given to configure.
881 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
882 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
883 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
884 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
885 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
886 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
887 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
888 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
889 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
891 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
892 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
895 * Removed obsolete command line options:
896 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
897 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
898 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
899 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
900 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
901 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
902 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
904 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
905 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
906 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
907 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
912 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
917 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
919 * New option --overwrite-dir.
920 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
921 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
924 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
926 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
929 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
934 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
936 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
939 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
941 * Some bugs were fixed:
943 - hard links to symbolic links
945 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
947 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
948 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
949 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
950 exclude patterns are interpreted.
952 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
953 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
954 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
955 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
956 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
957 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
958 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
959 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
961 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
962 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
963 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
966 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
968 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
969 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
971 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
972 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
975 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
977 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
978 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
979 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
981 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
982 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
984 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
986 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
988 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
990 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
992 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
993 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
995 * New language supported: da.
997 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
998 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1000 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1001 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1003 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1006 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1008 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1009 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1012 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1014 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1015 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1016 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1017 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1018 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1019 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1020 longstanding security problems.
1022 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1024 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1025 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1026 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1027 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1028 extracting a new directory.
1030 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1031 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1032 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1034 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1035 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1037 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1038 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1039 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1040 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1041 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1042 names have multibyte chars.
1044 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1045 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1046 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1047 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1048 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1049 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1050 are also escaped as needed.
1052 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1053 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1056 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1058 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1059 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1062 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1064 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1065 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1066 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1069 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1071 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1072 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1073 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1074 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1077 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1079 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1081 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1083 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1085 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1086 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1087 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1088 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1089 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1090 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1091 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1092 and which rejects large files.
1094 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1095 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1096 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1097 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1099 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1100 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1101 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1103 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1105 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1108 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1110 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1111 for compatibility with paxutils.
1113 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1114 if no explicit operands were given.
1116 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1117 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1118 even if they begin with '-'.
1120 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1121 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1122 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1123 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1124 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1125 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1128 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1130 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1131 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1132 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1135 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1137 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1138 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1140 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1143 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1144 numeric header field.
1147 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1149 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1150 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1151 the original file or directory.
1154 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1156 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1158 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1159 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1161 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1164 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1166 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1167 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1168 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1170 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1171 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1172 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1173 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1174 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1175 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1177 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1178 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1179 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1180 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1182 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1183 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1184 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1186 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1188 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1191 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1193 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1196 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1198 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1199 this matches historical practice.
1202 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1204 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1205 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1206 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1209 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1211 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1214 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1218 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1220 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1221 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1222 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1223 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1224 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1225 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1226 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1227 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1228 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1229 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1230 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1232 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1235 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1236 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1239 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1240 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1241 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1242 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1245 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1246 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1247 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1248 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1249 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1250 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1253 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1254 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1255 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1256 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1257 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1258 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1259 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1260 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1261 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1264 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1265 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1266 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1267 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1268 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1269 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1270 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1271 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1273 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1275 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1277 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1278 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1279 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1280 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1281 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1283 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1285 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1287 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1288 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1289 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1292 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1294 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1296 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1297 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1298 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1299 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1301 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1303 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1305 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1308 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1310 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1312 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1314 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1318 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1319 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1320 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1321 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1322 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1326 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1328 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1329 for it will eventually be removed.
1331 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1332 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1334 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1335 after they are added to the archive.
1337 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1340 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1341 is being read or written.
1343 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1344 omitted from the archive.
1346 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1347 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1349 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1350 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1352 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1353 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1354 around to the beginning.
1356 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1357 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1358 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1360 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1361 their original values after dumping the file.
1363 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1366 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1367 modification and access times.
1369 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1370 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1371 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1374 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1376 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1377 +newer-mtime work right.
1379 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1381 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1383 * +volume is now called +label.
1385 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1386 what +exclude used to do.
1388 * Exit status is now correct.
1390 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1392 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1394 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1395 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1396 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1398 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1399 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1400 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1401 all our backups at the FSF.
1403 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1404 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1405 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1407 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1411 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1413 This file is part of GNU tar.
1415 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1416 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1417 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1418 (at your option) any later version.
1420 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1421 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1422 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1423 GNU General Public License for more details.
1425 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1426 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1430 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1431 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1432 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1433 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1434 time-stamp-end: "\n"