1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2014-02-13
2 Please send GNU tar bug reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>
7 * New checkpoint action: totals
9 The --checkpoint-action=totals option instructs tar to output the
10 total number of bytes transferred at each checkpoint.
12 * Extended checkpoint format specification.
14 New conversion specifiers are implemented. Some of them take
15 optional arguments, supplied in curly braces between the percent
16 sign and the specifier letter.
18 %d - Number of seconds since tar started.
19 %{r,w,d}T - I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
20 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
21 deleted, correspondingly.
22 %{FMT}t - Current local time using FMT as strftime(3) format.
23 If {FMT} is omitted, use %c.
24 %{N}* - Pad output with spaces to the Nth column, or to the
25 current screen width, if {N} is not given.
26 %c - A shortcut for "%{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}t: %ds, %{read,wrote}T%*\r"
28 * New option --one-top-level
30 The option --one-top-level tells tar to extract all files into a
31 subdirectory named by the base name of the archive (minus standard
32 compression suffixes recognizable by --auto-compress). When used with
33 an argument, as in --one-top-level=DIR, the files are extracted into the
34 supplied DIRectory. This ensures that no archive members are
35 extracted outside of the specified directory, even if the archive is
36 crafted so as to put them elsewhere.
40 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
41 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
42 home-made pages they provided so far.
45 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
49 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
51 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
53 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
56 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
60 ** Sparse files with large data
62 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
63 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
67 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
68 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
69 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
70 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
72 * --owner and --group names and numbers
74 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
75 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
76 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
77 present in the current host's user and group databases.
79 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
81 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
82 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
83 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
84 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
85 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
87 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
88 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
89 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
90 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
91 together with this option.
93 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
95 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
96 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
97 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
98 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
99 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
100 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
101 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
104 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
106 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
107 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
108 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
110 --checkpoint-action=exec
111 -I, --use-compress-program
115 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
116 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
117 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
118 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
120 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
122 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
124 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
126 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
127 size, if it differs from the default.
129 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
131 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
132 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
133 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
135 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
136 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
138 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
139 installation scripts.
142 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
146 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
148 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
150 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
152 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
155 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
157 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
159 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
160 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
163 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
165 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
166 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
167 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
169 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
170 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
171 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
173 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
175 * Improve the testsuite.
177 * Alternative decompression programs.
179 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
180 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
181 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
183 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
185 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
186 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
188 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
191 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
193 * The --full-time option.
195 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
196 time stamps to the full resolution.
200 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
202 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
203 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
204 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
205 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
206 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
207 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
209 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
210 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
211 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
212 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
214 ** Symbolic link attributes
216 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
217 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
218 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
219 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
222 ** --dereference consistency
224 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
225 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
226 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
227 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
228 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
229 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
230 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
231 the implementation was not consistent.
233 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
234 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
235 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
238 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
240 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
241 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
242 invoked as in the example below:
244 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
248 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
249 symlinks to another files within that directory.
251 ** --test-label behavior
253 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
254 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
256 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
259 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
261 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
263 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
264 matches the actual volume label.
266 ** --label used with --update
268 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
269 update of an archive:
271 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
273 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
275 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
277 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
278 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
280 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
283 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
285 * Record size autodetection
287 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
288 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
289 to regular files and pipes).
293 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
294 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
296 * New command line option '--warning'
298 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
299 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
300 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
301 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
302 messages are suppressed. For example,
304 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
306 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
307 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
309 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
312 * New command line option '--level'
314 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
315 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
316 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
317 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
318 the snapshot file if it exists.
320 * Files removed during incremental dumps
322 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
323 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
324 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
325 during file system scan.
327 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
328 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
331 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
332 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
333 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
334 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
335 is issued and exit code remains 0.
337 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
339 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
340 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
341 can be overridden by the
343 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
345 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
346 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
348 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
349 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
351 This can be overridden by the
353 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
355 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
356 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
358 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
360 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
361 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
362 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
363 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
364 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
365 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
367 * Environment of --to-command script.
369 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
370 the following variables:
372 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
373 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
374 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
375 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
376 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
379 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
380 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
381 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
382 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
383 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
384 succesfully stored in the archive.
385 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
386 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
388 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
391 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
393 * Support for xz compression
395 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
397 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
398 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
399 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
400 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
402 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
404 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
405 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
406 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
408 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
412 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
413 --use-compress-program.
415 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
418 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
420 * New short option -J
422 A shortcut for --lzma.
426 * New option --no-auto-compress
428 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
430 * New option --no-null
432 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
434 * Compressed format recognition
436 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
437 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
441 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
444 * Transformation scope flags
446 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
447 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
450 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
453 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
456 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
458 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
459 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
461 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
464 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
466 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
467 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
468 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
469 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
471 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
475 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
477 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
478 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
479 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
480 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
484 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
486 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
488 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
489 of the archive file name.
493 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
495 * New option --hard-dereference
497 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
498 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
500 * New option --checkpoint-action
502 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
503 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
504 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
505 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
506 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
507 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
509 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
511 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
512 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
513 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
516 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
517 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
518 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
519 environment variable.
521 * The --transform option.
523 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
524 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
526 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
527 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
529 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
530 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
533 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
536 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
538 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
539 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
541 * Incremental archives
543 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
546 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
550 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
552 * New option --exclude-vcs
554 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
555 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
557 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
559 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
567 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
569 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
570 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
571 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
574 * Fix --version output.
576 * Recognition of broken archives.
578 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
579 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
580 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
581 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
583 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
585 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
588 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
590 * Licensed under the GPLv3
592 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
595 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
597 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
598 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
600 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
601 a full dump when both options were given.
603 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
604 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
606 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
608 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
609 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
610 option affects hard link targets as well.
612 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
613 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
616 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
618 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
619 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
622 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
623 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
624 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
625 still added to the archive.
627 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
628 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
629 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
630 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
631 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
632 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
633 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
635 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
636 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
637 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
640 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
642 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
643 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
644 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
646 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
647 members during creation.
650 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
651 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
652 the listing to stderr.
655 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
657 * Incompatible changes
661 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
662 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
666 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
667 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
668 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
669 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
670 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
673 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
674 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
675 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
677 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
678 following command line options:
680 --wildcards use wildcards
681 --anchored patterns match file name start
682 --ignore-case ignore case
683 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
685 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
686 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
688 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
689 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
690 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
692 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
693 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
695 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
696 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
697 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
698 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
700 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
702 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
703 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
707 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
708 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
709 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
711 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
713 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
715 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
716 versions it worked only with --extract.
718 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
719 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
720 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
721 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
722 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
723 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
725 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
726 as well as that about directories.
728 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
729 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
730 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
733 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
734 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
735 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
736 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
737 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
740 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
743 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
747 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
748 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
749 including another -T option.
750 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
751 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
752 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
753 dash, use the --add-file option.
755 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
756 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
758 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
759 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
760 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
762 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
763 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
764 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
767 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
768 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
770 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
771 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
772 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
773 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
775 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
778 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
779 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
782 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
783 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
784 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
785 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
786 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
788 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
789 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
791 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
792 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
793 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
794 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
795 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
796 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
797 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
799 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
800 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
801 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
802 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
804 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
805 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
806 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
807 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
809 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
810 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
811 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
815 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
816 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
817 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
818 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
819 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
820 was not processed correctly.
821 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
823 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
824 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
826 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
827 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
828 (for ustar and v7 formats).
829 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
830 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
831 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
832 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
836 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
838 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
839 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
842 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
844 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
845 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
846 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
848 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
849 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
852 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
853 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
854 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
855 back up. This change fixes the bug.
857 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
860 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
863 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
864 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
866 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
867 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
869 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
870 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
871 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
873 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
875 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
876 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
877 introduced in version 1.14
879 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
880 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
881 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
882 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
883 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
886 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
887 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
888 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
889 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
890 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
891 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
892 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
893 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
894 extracted copy in such cases.
895 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
896 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
897 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
898 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
899 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
900 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
901 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
904 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
906 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
907 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
908 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
909 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
910 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
911 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
912 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
914 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
915 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
916 the previous default behavior.
918 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
919 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
920 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
921 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
924 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
925 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
926 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
927 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
928 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
930 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
931 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
932 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
933 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
934 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
935 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
936 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
938 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
939 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
942 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
943 individual files, as well as on directories.
945 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
946 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
947 option is given to configure.
949 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
950 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
951 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
952 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
953 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
954 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
955 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
956 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
957 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
959 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
960 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
963 * Removed obsolete command line options:
964 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
965 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
966 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
967 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
968 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
969 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
970 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
972 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
973 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
974 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
975 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
980 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
985 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
987 * New option --overwrite-dir.
988 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
989 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
992 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
994 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
997 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
1002 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
1004 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
1007 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
1009 * Some bugs were fixed:
1011 - hard links to symbolic links
1013 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1015 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1016 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1017 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1018 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1020 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1021 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1022 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1023 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1024 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1025 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1026 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1027 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1029 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1030 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1031 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1034 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1036 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1037 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1039 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1040 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1043 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1045 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1046 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1047 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1049 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1050 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1052 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1054 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1056 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1058 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1060 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1061 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1063 * New language supported: da.
1065 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1066 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1068 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1069 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1071 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1074 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1076 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1077 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1080 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1082 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1083 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1084 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1085 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1086 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1087 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1088 longstanding security problems.
1090 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1092 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1093 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1094 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1095 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1096 extracting a new directory.
1098 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1099 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1100 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1102 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1103 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1105 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1106 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1107 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1108 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1109 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1110 names have multibyte chars.
1112 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1113 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1114 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1115 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1116 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1117 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1118 are also escaped as needed.
1120 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1121 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1124 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1126 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1127 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1130 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1132 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1133 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1134 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1137 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1139 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1140 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1141 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1142 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1145 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1147 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1149 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1151 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1153 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1154 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1155 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1156 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1157 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1158 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1159 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1160 and which rejects large files.
1162 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1163 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1164 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1165 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1167 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1168 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1169 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1171 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1173 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1176 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1178 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1179 for compatibility with paxutils.
1181 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1182 if no explicit operands were given.
1184 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1185 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1186 even if they begin with '-'.
1188 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1189 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1190 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1191 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1192 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1193 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1196 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1198 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1199 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1200 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1203 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1205 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1206 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1208 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1211 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1212 numeric header field.
1215 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1217 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1218 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1219 the original file or directory.
1222 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1224 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1226 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1227 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1229 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1232 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1234 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1235 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1236 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1238 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1239 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1240 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1241 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1242 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1243 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1245 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1246 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1247 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1248 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1250 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1251 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1252 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1254 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1256 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1259 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1261 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1264 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1266 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1267 this matches historical practice.
1270 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1272 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1273 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1274 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1277 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1279 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1282 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1286 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1288 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1289 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1290 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1291 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1292 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1293 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1294 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1295 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1296 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1297 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1298 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1300 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1303 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1304 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1307 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1308 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1309 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1310 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1313 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1314 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1315 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1316 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1317 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1318 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1321 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1322 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1323 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1324 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1325 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1326 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1327 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1328 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1329 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1332 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1333 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1334 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1335 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1336 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1337 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1338 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1339 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1341 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1343 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1345 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1346 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1347 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1348 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1349 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1351 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1353 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1355 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1356 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1357 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1360 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1362 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1364 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1365 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1366 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1367 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1369 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1371 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1373 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1376 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1378 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1380 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1382 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1386 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1387 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1388 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1389 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1390 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1394 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1396 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1397 for it will eventually be removed.
1399 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1400 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1402 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1403 after they are added to the archive.
1405 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1408 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1409 is being read or written.
1411 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1412 omitted from the archive.
1414 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1415 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1417 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1418 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1420 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1421 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1422 around to the beginning.
1424 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1425 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1426 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1428 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1429 their original values after dumping the file.
1431 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1434 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1435 modification and access times.
1437 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1438 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1439 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1442 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1444 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1445 +newer-mtime work right.
1447 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1449 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1451 * +volume is now called +label.
1453 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1454 what +exclude used to do.
1456 * Exit status is now correct.
1458 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1460 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1462 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1463 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1464 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1466 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1467 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1468 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1469 all our backups at the FSF.
1471 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1472 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1473 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1475 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1479 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1481 This file is part of GNU tar.
1483 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1484 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1485 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1486 (at your option) any later version.
1488 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1489 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1490 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1491 GNU General Public License for more details.
1493 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1494 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1498 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1499 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1500 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1501 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1502 time-stamp-end: "\n"