1 GNU tar NEWS - User visible changes. 2014-01-27
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 - output number of seconds since tar started
19 %{r,w,d}T - output I/O totals; optional arguments supply prefixes
20 to be used before number of bytes read, written and
21 deleted, correspondingly.
22 %{FMT}t - output 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"
30 This release includes official tar(1) and rmt(8) manpages.
31 Distribution maintainers are kindly asked to use these instead of the
32 home-made pages they provided so far.
35 version 1.27.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-11-17
39 * Fix unquoting of file names obtained via the -T option.
41 * Fix GNU long link header timestamp (backward compatibility).
43 * Fix extracting sparse members from star archives.
46 version 1.27 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2013-10-05
50 ** Sparse files with large data
52 When creating a PAX-format archive, tar no longer arbitrarily restricts
53 the size of the representation of a sparse file to be less than 8 GiB.
57 In the default C locale, diagnostics and output of 'tar' have been
58 adjusted to quote 'like this' (with apostrophes) instead of `like this'
59 (with an accent grave character and an apostrophe). This tracks
60 recent changes to the GNU coding standards.
62 * --owner and --group names and numbers
64 The --owner and --group options now accept operands of the form
65 NAME:NUM, so that you can specify both symbolic name and numeric ID
66 for owner and group. In these options, NAME no longer needs to be
67 present in the current host's user and group databases.
69 * The --keep-old-files and --skip-old-files options.
71 This release restores the traditional functionality of the
72 --keep-old-files. This option causes tar to avoid replacing
73 existing files while extracting and to treat such files as errors.
74 Tar will emit a prominent error message upon encountering such files
75 and will exit with code 2 when finished extracting the archive.
77 A new option --skip-old-files is introduced, which acts exactly as
78 --keep-old-files, except that it does not treat existing files as
79 errors. Instead it just silently skips them. An additional level of
80 verbosity can be obtained by using the option --warning=existing-file
81 together with this option.
83 * Support for POSIX ACLs, extended attributes and SELinux context.
85 Starting with this version tar is able to store, extract and list
86 extended file attributes, POSIX.1e ACLs and SELinux context. This is
87 controlled by the command line options --xattrs, --acls and --selinux,
88 correspondingly. Each of these options has a `--no-' counterpart
89 (e.g. --no-xattrs), which disables the corresponding feature.
90 Additionally, the options --xattrs-include and --xattrs-exclude allow
91 you to selectively control for which files to store (or extract) the
94 * Passing command line arguments to external commands.
96 Any option taking a command name as its argument now accepts a full
97 command line as well. Thus, it is now possible to pass additional
98 arguments to invoked programs. The affected options are:
100 --checkpoint-action=exec
101 -I, --use-compress-program
105 Furthermore, if any additional information is supplied to such a
106 command via environment variables, these variables can now be used in
107 the command line itself. Care should be taken to escape them, to
108 prevent from being expanded too early, for example:
110 tar -x -f a.tar --info-script='changevol $TAR_ARCHIVE $TAR_VOLUME'
112 * New configure option --enable-gcc-warnings, intended for debugging.
114 * New warning control option --warning=[no-]record-size
116 On extraction, this option controls whether to display actual record
117 size, if it differs from the default.
119 * New command line option --keep-directory-symlink
121 By default, if trying to extract a directory from the archive,
122 tar discovers that the corresponding file name already exists and is a
123 symbolic link, it first unlinks the entry, and then extracts the directory.
125 This option disables this behavior and instructs tar to follow
126 symlinks to directories when extracting from the archive.
128 It is mainly intended to provide compatibility with the Slackware
129 installation scripts.
132 version 1.26 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2011-03-12
136 ** Fix the --verify option, which broke in version 1.24.
138 ** Fix storing long sparse file names in PAX archives.
140 ** Fix correctness of --atime-preserve=replace
142 tar --atime-preserve=replace no longer tries to restore atime of
145 ** Work around POSIX incompatibilities on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Tru64
147 ** Fix bug with --one-file-system --listed-incremental
149 When invoked with these two options, tar 1.25 would add only the
150 top-level directory to the archive, but not its contents.
153 version 1.25 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-11-07
155 * Fix extraction of empty directories with the -C option in effect.
156 * Fix extraction of device nodes.
157 * Make sure name matching occurs before eventual name transformation.
159 Tar 1.24 changed the ordering of name matching and name transformation
160 so that the former saw already transformed file names. This made it
161 impossible to match file names in certain cases. It is fixed now.
163 * Fix the behavior of tar -x --overwrite on hosts lacking O_NOFOLLOW.
165 * Improve the testsuite.
167 * Alternative decompression programs.
169 If extraction from a compressed archive fails because the corresponding
170 compression program is not installed and the following two conditions
171 are met, tar retries extraction using an alternative decompressor:
173 1. Another compression program supported by tar is able to handle this
175 2. The compression program was not explicitly requested in the command
176 line by the use of such options as -z, -j, etc.
178 For example, if 'compress' is not available, tar will try 'gzip'.
181 version 1.24 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-10-24
183 * The --full-time option.
185 New command line option '--full-time' instructs tar to output file
186 time stamps to the full resolution.
190 ** More reliable directory traversal when creating archives
192 Tar now checks for inconsistencies caused when a file system is
193 modified while tar is creating an archive. In the new approach, tar
194 maintains a cache of file descriptors to directories, so it uses more
195 file descriptors than before, but it adjusts to system limits on
196 the number of file descriptors. Tar also takes more care when
197 a file system is modified while tar is extracting from an archive.
199 The new checks are implemented via the openat and related calls
200 standardized by POSIX.1-2008. On an older system where these calls do
201 not exist or do not return useful results, tar emulates the calls at
202 some cost in efficiency and reliability.
204 ** Symbolic link attributes
206 When extracting symbolic links, tar now restores attributes such as
207 last-modified time and link permissions, if the operating system
208 supports this. For example, recent versions of the Linux kernel
209 support setting times on symlinks, and some BSD kernels also support
212 ** --dereference consistency
214 The --dereference (-h) option now applies to files that are copied
215 into or out of archives, independently of other options. For example,
216 if F is a symbolic link and archive.tar contains a regular-file member
217 also named F, "tar --overwrite -x -f archive.tar F" now overwrites F
218 itself, rather than the file that F points to. (To overwrite the file
219 that F points to, add the --dereference (-h) option.) Formerly,
220 --dereference was intended to apply only when using the -c option, but
221 the implementation was not consistent.
223 Also, the --dereference option no longer affects accesses to other
224 files, such as archives and time stamp files. Symbolic links to these
225 files are always followed. Previously, the links were usually but not
228 ** Spurious error diagnostics on broken pipe.
230 When receiving SIGPIPE, tar would exit with error status and
231 "write error" diagnostics. In particular, this occurred if
232 invoked as in the example below:
234 tar tf archive.tar | head -n 1
238 'tar --remove-files' failed to remove a directory which contained
239 symlinks to another files within that directory.
241 ** --test-label behavior
243 In case of a mismatch, 'tar --test-label LABEL' exits with code 1,
244 not 2 as it did in previous versions.
246 The '--verbose' option used with '--test-label' provides additional
249 Several volume labels may be specified in a command line, e.g.:
251 tar --test-label -f archive 'My volume' 'New volume' 'Test volume'
253 In this case, tar exits with code 0 if any one of the arguments
254 matches the actual volume label.
256 ** --label used with --update
258 The '--label' option can be used with '--update' to prevent accidental
259 update of an archive:
261 tar -rf archive --label 'My volume' .
263 This did not work in previous versions, in spite of what the docs said.
265 ** --record-size and --tape-length (-L) options
267 Usual size suffixes are allowed for these options. For example,
268 -L10k stands for a 10 kilobyte tape length.
270 ** Fix dead loop on extracting existing symlinks with the -k option.
273 version 1.23 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2010-03-10
275 * Record size autodetection
277 When listing or extracting archives, the actual record size is
278 reported only if the archive is read from a device (as opposed
279 to regular files and pipes).
283 When a read-only operation (e.g. --list or --extract) is requested
284 on a regular file, tar attemtps to speed up accesses by using lseek.
286 * New command line option '--warning'
288 The '--warning' command line option allows to suppress or enable
289 particular warning messages during 'tar' run. It takes a single
290 argument (a 'keyword'), identifying the class of warning messages
291 to affect. If the argument is prefixed with 'no-', such warning
292 messages are suppressed. For example,
294 tar --warning=no-alone-zero-block -x -f archive
296 suppresses the output of "A lone zero block" diagnostics, which is
297 normally issued if 'archive' ends with a single block of zeros.
299 See Tar Manual, section 3.9 "Controlling Warning Messages", for a
302 * New command line option '--level'
304 The '--level=N' option sets the incremental dump level N. It
305 is valid when used in conjunction with the -c and --listed-incremental
306 options. So far the only meaningful value for N is 0. The
307 '--level=0' option forces creating the level 0 dump, by truncating
308 the snapshot file if it exists.
310 * Files removed during incremental dumps
312 If a file or directory is removed while incremental dump is
313 in progress, tar exact actions depend on whether this file
314 was explicitly listed in the command line, or was found
315 during file system scan.
317 If the file was explicitly listed in the command line, tar
318 issues error message and exits with the code 2, meaning
321 Otherwise, if the file was found during the file system scan,
322 tar issues a warning, saying "File removed before we read it",
323 and sets exit code to 1, which means "some files differ".
324 If the --warning=no-file-removed option is given, no warning
325 is issued and exit code remains 0.
327 * Modification times of PAX extended headers.
329 Modification times in ustar header blocks of extended headers
330 are set to mtimes of the corresponding archive members. This
331 can be overridden by the
333 --pax-opion='exthdr.mtime=STRING'
335 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
336 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
338 Modification times in ustar header blocks of global extended
339 headers are set to the time when tar was invoked.
341 This can be overridden by the
343 --pax-opion='globexthdr.mtime=STRING'
345 command line option. The STRING is either number of seconds since
346 the Epoch or a "Time reference" (see below).
348 * Time references in --pax-option argument.
350 Any value from the --pax-option argument that is enclosed in a pair
351 of curly braces represents a time reference. The string between the
352 braces is understood either as a textual time representation, as described in
353 chapter 7, "Date input formats", of the Tar manual, or as a name of
354 an existing file, starting with '/' or '.'. In the latter
355 case, it is replaced with the modification time of that file.
357 * Environment of --to-command script.
359 The environment passed to the --to-command script is extended with
360 the following variables:
362 TAR_VERSION GNU tar version number
363 TAR_ARCHIVE The name of the archive
364 TAR_VOLUME Ordinal number of the volume
365 TAR_FORMAT Format of the archive
366 TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR Current blocking factor
369 ** Fix handling of hard link targets by -c --transform.
370 ** Fix hard links recognition with -c --remove-files.
371 ** Fix restoring files from backup (debian bug #508199).
372 ** Correctly restore modes and permissions on existing directories.
373 ** The --remove-files option removes files only if they were
374 succesfully stored in the archive.
375 ** Fix storing and listing of the volume labels in POSIX format.
376 ** Improve algorithm for splitting long file names (ustar
378 ** Fix possible memory overflow in the rmt client code (CVE-2010-0624).
381 version 1.22 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2009-03-05
383 * Support for xz compression
385 Tar uses xz for compression if one of the following conditions is met:
387 1. The option --xz or -J (see below) is used.
388 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
389 3. The file name of the archive being created ends in '.xz' and
390 auto-compress option (-a) is used.
392 Xz is used for decompression if one of the following conditions is met:
394 1. The option --xz or -J is used.
395 2. The xz binary is set as compressor using --use-compress-program option.
396 3. The file is recognized as xz compressed stream data.
398 * Short option -J reassigned as a short equivalent of --xz
402 The -I option is assigned as a short equivalent for
403 --use-compress-program.
405 * The --no-recursive option works in incremental mode.
408 version 1.21 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-12-27
410 * New short option -J
412 A shortcut for --lzma.
416 * New option --no-auto-compress
418 Cancels the effect of previous --auto-compress (-a) option.
420 * New option --no-null
422 Cancels the effect of previous --null option.
424 * Compressed format recognition
426 If tar is unable to determine archive compression format, it falls
427 back to using archive suffix to determine it.
431 Using --exclude-vcs handles also files used internally by Bazaar,
434 * Transformation scope flags
436 Name transformation expressions understand additional flags that
437 control type of archive members affected by them. The flags are:
440 Apply transformation to regular archive members.
443 Apply transformation to symbolic link targets.
446 Apply transformation to hard link targets.
448 Corresponding upper-case letters negate the meaning, so that
449 'H' means "do not apply transformation to hard link targets".
451 The scope flags are listed in the third part of an 's' expression,
454 tar --transform 's|^|/usr/local/|S'
456 Default is 'rsh', which means that transformations are applied to
457 both regular archive members and to the targets of symbolic and hard
458 links. If several transform expressions are used, the default flags
459 can be changed using 'flags=' statement before the expressions, e.g.:
461 tar --transform 'flags=S;s|^|/usr/local/|S'
465 ** The --null option disabled handling of tar options in list files. This
467 ** Fixed record size autodetection. If the detected record size differs from
468 the expected value (either default one, or the one set from the
469 command line), tar always prints a warning if verbosity level is set
470 to 1 or greater, i.e. if either -t or -v option is given.
474 version 1.20 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2008-04-14
476 * New option --auto-compress (-a)
478 With --create, selects compression algorithm basing on the suffix
479 of the archive file name.
483 Selects LZMA compression algorithm
485 * New option --hard-dereference
487 During archive creation, dereferences hard links and stores the files
488 they refer to, instead of creating usual hard link members (type '1').
490 * New option --checkpoint-action
492 This action allows to specify an action to be executed upon hitting a
493 checkpoint. Recognized actions are: dot, echo (the default),
494 echo=string, ttyout=string, exec=cmdline, and sleep=value. Any number
495 of '--checkpoint-action' options can be specified, the actions will be
496 executed in order of their appearance in the command line. See
497 chapter 3.8 "Checkpoints" for a complete description.
499 * New options --no-check-device, --check-device.
501 The '--no-check-device' option disables comparing device numbers during
502 preparatory stage of an incremental dump. This allows to avoid
503 creating full dumps if the device numbers change (e.g. when using an
506 The '--check-device' option enables comparing device numbers. This is
507 the default. This option is provided to undo the effect of the previous
508 '--no-check-device' option, e.g. if it was set in TAR_OPTIONS
509 environment variable.
511 * The --transform option.
513 Any number of '--transform' options can be given in the command line.
514 The specified transformations will be applied in turn.
516 The argument to '--transform' option can be a list of replace
517 expressions, separated by a semicolon (as in 'sed').
519 Filename transformations are applied to symbolic link targets
520 during both creation and extraction. Tar 1.19 used them only
523 For a detailed description, see chapter 6.7 "Modifying File and Member
526 * Info (end-of-volume) scripts
528 The value of the blocking factor is made available to info and
529 checkpoint scripts via environment variable TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR.
531 * Incremental archives
533 Improved (sped up) extracting from incremental archives.
536 ** Fix bug introduced in version 1.19: tar refused to update non-existing
540 version 1.19 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-10-10
542 * New option --exclude-vcs
544 Excludes directories and files, created by several widely used version
545 control systems, e.g. "CVS/", ".svn/", etc.
547 * --exclude-tag and --exclude-cache options
549 The following options now work with incremental archives as well:
557 * Fix handling of renamed files in listed incremental archives.
559 Previous versions always stored absolute file names in rename
560 records, even if -P was not used. This is fixed: rename records
561 contain file names processed in accordance with the command line
564 * Fix --version output.
566 * Recognition of broken archives.
568 When supplied an archive smaller than 512 bytes in reading mode (-x,
569 -t), the previous version of tar silently ignored it, exiting with
570 code 0. It is fixed. Tar now issues the following diagnostic message:
571 'This does not look like a tar archive', and exits with code 2.
573 * Fix double-dot recognition in archive member names in case of duplicate '/.'.
575 * Fix file padding in case of truncation of the input file to zero size.
578 version 1.18 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-29
580 * Licensed under the GPLv3
582 * Fixed several bugs in the testsuite
585 version 1.17 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2007-06-08
587 * Fix archivation of sparse files in posix mode. Previous versions padded
588 sparse members with spurious zero blocks.
590 * Fix operation of --verify --listed-incremental. Version 1.16.1 produced
591 a full dump when both options were given.
593 * Fix --occurrence. In previous versions it continued scanning the archive
594 even though all requested members has already been extracted.
596 * Scope of --transform and --strip-components options.
598 In addition to affecting regular archive members, the --transform
599 option affects hard and soft link targets and the --strip-components
600 option affects hard link targets as well.
602 * End-of-volume script can send the new volume name to tar by writing
603 it to the file descriptor stored in the environment variable TAR_FD.
606 version 1.16.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-12-09
608 * New option --exclude-tag allows to specify "exclusion tag files", i.e.
609 files whose presence in a directory means that the directory should not
612 * The --exclude-cache option excludes directories that contain the
613 CACHEDIR.TAG file from being archived. Previous versions excluded
614 directory contents only, while the directories themselves were
615 still added to the archive.
617 * Support for reading ustar type 'N' header logical records has been removed.
618 This GNU extension was generated only by very old versions of GNU 'tar'.
619 Unfortunately its implementation had security holes; see
620 <http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2006-11/0344.html>.
621 We don't expect that any tar archives in practical use have type 'N'
622 records, but if you have one and you trust its contents, you can
623 decode it with GNU tar 1.16 or earlier.
625 * Race conditions have been fixed that in some cases briefly allowed
626 files extracted by 'tar -x --same-owner' (or plain 'tar -x', when
627 running as root) to be accessed by users that they shouldn't have been.
630 version 1.16 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-10-21
632 * After creating an archive, tar exits with code 1 if some files were
633 changed while being read. Previous versions exited with code 2 (fatal
634 error), and only if some files were truncated while being archived.
636 * New option --mtime allows to set modification times for all archive
637 members during creation.
640 ** Avoid running off file descriptors when using multiple -C options.
641 ** tar --index-file=FILE --file=- sent the archive to FILE, and
642 the listing to stderr.
645 version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-06-16
647 * Incompatible changes
651 Previous versions of GNU tar assumed shell-style globbing when
652 extracting from or listing an archive. For example:
656 would extract all files whose names end in '.c'. This behavior
657 was not documented and was incompatible with traditional tar
658 implementations. Therefore, starting from this version, GNU tar
659 no longer uses globbing by default. For example, the above invocation
660 is now interpreted as a request to extract from the archive the file
663 To treat member names as globbing patterns, use --wildcards option.
664 If you wish tar to mimic the behavior of versions up to 1.15.90,
665 add --wildcards to the value of the environment variable TAR_OPTIONS.
667 The exact way in which tar interprets member names is controlled by the
668 following command line options:
670 --wildcards use wildcards
671 --anchored patterns match file name start
672 --ignore-case ignore case
673 --wildcards-match-slash wildcards match '/'
675 Each of these options has a '--no-' counterpart that disables its
676 effect (e.g. --no-wildcards).
678 These options affect both the interpretation of member names from
679 command line and that of the exclusion patterns (given with --exclude
680 and --exclude-from options). The defaults are:
682 1. For member names: --no-wildcards --anchored
683 2. For exclusion patterns: --wildcards --no-anchored --wildcards-match-slash
685 The options can appear multiple times in the command line, thereby
686 changing the way command line arguments are interpreted. For example,
687 to use case-insensitive matching in exclude patterns and to revert to
688 case-sensitive matching for the rest of command line, one could write:
690 tar xf foo.tar --ignore-case --exclude-from=FILE --no-ignore-case file.name
692 ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which complies
693 with UNIX98. This ends the transition period started with version 1.14.
697 ** New option --transform allows to transform file names before storing them
698 in the archive or member names before extracting. The option takes a
699 sed replace expression as its argument. For example,
701 tar cf foo.tar --transform 's,^,prefix/,'
703 will add 'prefix/' to all file names stored in foo.tar.
705 ** --strip-components option works when deleting and comparing. In previous
706 versions it worked only with --extract.
708 ** New option --show-transformed-names enables display of transformed file
709 or archive. It generalizes --show-stored-names option, introduced in
710 1.15.90. In particular, when creating an archive in verbose mode, it lists
711 member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual prefixes
712 removed and file name transformations applied. The option is useful,
713 for example, while comparing 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
715 ** New incremental snapshot file format keeps information about file names
716 as well as that about directories.
718 ** The --checkpoint option takes an optional argument specifying the number
719 of records between the two successive checkpoints. Optional dot
720 starting the argument intructs tar to print dots instead of textual
723 ** The --totals option can be used with any tar operation (previous versions
724 understood it only with --create). If an argument to this option is
725 given, it specifies the signal upon delivery of which the statistics
726 is to be printed. Both forms of this option (with and without
727 argument) can be given to in a single invocation of tar.
730 ** Detect attempts to update compressed archives.
733 version 1.15.90 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2006-02-19
737 ** Any number of -T (--files-from) options may be used in the command line.
738 The file specified with -T may include any valid 'tar' options,
739 including another -T option.
740 Compatibility note: older versions of tar would only recognize -C
741 as an option name within the file list file. Now any file whose name
742 starts with - is handled as an option. To insert file names starting with
743 dash, use the --add-file option.
745 ** List files containing null-separated file names are detected and processed
746 automatically. It is no longer necessary to give the --null option.
748 ** New option --no-unquote disables the unquoting of input file names.
749 This is useful for processing output from 'find dir -print0'.
750 An orthogonal option --unquote is provided as well.
752 ** New option --test-label tests the archive volume label.
753 If an argument is specified, the label is compared against its value.
754 Tar exits with code 0 if the two strings match, and with code 2 if
757 If no argument is given, the --verbose option is implied. In this case,
758 tar prints the label name if present and exits with code 0.
760 ** New option --show-stored-names. When creating an archive in verbose mode,
761 it lists member names as stored in the archive, i.e., with any eventual
762 prefixes removed. The option is useful, for example, while comparing
763 'tar cv' and 'tar tv' outputs.
765 ** New option --to-command pipes the contents of archive members to the
768 ** New option --atime-preserve=system, which uses the O_NOATIME feature
769 of recent Linux kernels to avoid some problems when preserving file
772 ** New option --delay-directory-restore delays restoring modification times
773 and permissions of extracted directories until the end of extraction.
774 This is necessary for restoring from archives with unusual member
775 ordering (in particular, those created with --no-recursion option).
776 This option is implied when restoring from incremental archives.
778 ** New option --restrict prohibits use of some potentially harmful tar
779 options. Currently it disables '!' escape in multi-volume name menu.
781 ** New options --quoting-style and --quote-chars control the way tar
782 quotes member names on output. The --quoting-style takes an argument
783 specifying the quoting style to use (literal, shell, shell-always,
784 c, escape, locale, clocale). The argument to --quote-chars is a string
785 specifying characters to quote, even if the selected quoting style
786 would not quote them otherwise. The option --no-quote-chars is
787 provided to disable quoting certain characters.
789 ** The end-of-volume script (introduced with --info-script option) can
790 get current archive name from the environment variable TAR_ARCHIVE and
791 the volume number from the variable TAR_VOLUME. It can alter the
792 archive name by writing new name to the file descriptor 3.
794 ** Better support for full-resolution time stamps. Tar cannot restore
795 time stamps to full nanosecond resolution, though, until the kernel
796 guys get their act together and give us a system call to set file time
797 stamps to nanosecond resolution.
799 ** The -v option now prints time stamps only to 1-minute resolution,
800 not full resolution, to avoid using up too many output columns.
801 Nanosecond resolution is now supported, but that would be too much.
805 ** Allow non-option arguments to be interspersed with options.
806 ** When extracting or listing archives in old GNU format, tar
807 used to read an extra block of data after a long name header
808 if length of the member name was divisible by block size (512).
809 Consequently, the file pointer was set off and the next member
810 was not processed correctly.
811 ** Previous version created invalid archives when files shrink
813 ** Compare mode (tar d) hung when trying to compare file contents.
814 ** Previous versions in certain cases failed to restore directory
816 ** When creating an archive, do not attempt to store files whose
817 meta-data cannot be stored in the header due to format limitations
818 (for ustar and v7 formats).
819 ** The --version option now also outputs information about copyright,
820 license, and credits. This reverts to the behavior of tar 1.14 and
821 earlier, and conforms to the GNU coding standards. The --license (-L)
822 option introduced in tar 1.15 has been removed, since it's no longer
826 version 1.15.1 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-21
828 This version fixes a bug introduced in 1.15 which caused
829 tar to refuse to extract files from standard input.
832 version 1.15 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-12-20
834 * Compressed archives are recognised automatically, it is no longer
835 necessary to specify -Z, -z, or -j options to read them. Thus, you can
836 now run 'tar tf archive.tar.gz'.
838 * When restoring incremental dumps, --one-file-system option
839 prevents directory hierarchies residing on different devices
842 With the previous versions of tar it was dangerous to create
843 incremental dumps with --one-file-system option, since they
844 would recursively remove mount points when restoring from the
845 back up. This change fixes the bug.
847 * Renamed --strip-path to --strip-components for consistency with
850 * Skipping archive members is sped up if the archive media supports
853 * Restore script starts restoring only if it is given --all (-a) option,
854 or some patterns. This is to prevent accidental restores.
856 * 'tar --verify' prints a warning if during archive creation some of
857 the file names had their prefixes stripped off.
859 * New option --exclude-caches instructs tar to exclude cache directories
860 automatically on archive creation. Cache directories are those
861 containing a standardized tag file, as specified at:
863 http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html
865 * New configure option --with-rmt allows to specify full path name to
866 the 'rmt' utility. This supersedes DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND variable
867 introduced in version 1.14
869 * New configure variable DEFAULT_RMT_DIR allows to specify the directory
870 where to install 'rmt' utility. This is necessary since modifying
871 --libexecdir as was suggested for version 1.14 produced a side effect: it
872 also modified installation prefix for backup scripts (if
873 --enable-backup-scripts was given).
876 ** Fixed flow in recognizing files to be included in incremental dumps.
877 ** Correctly recognize sparse archive members when used with -T option.
878 ** GNU multivolume headers cannot store filenames longer than 100 characters.
879 Do not allow multivolume archives to begin with such filenames.
880 ** If a member with link count > 2 was stored in the archive twice,
881 previous versions of tar were not able to extract it, since they
882 were trying to link the file to itself, which always failed and
883 lead to removing the already extracted copy. Preserve the first
884 extracted copy in such cases.
885 ** Restore script was passing improper argument to tar --listed option (which
886 didn't affect the functionality, but was logically incorrect).
887 ** Fixed verification of created archives.
888 ** Fixed unquoting of file names containing backslash escapes (previous
889 versions failed to recognize \a and \v).
890 ** When attempting to delete a non-existing member from the archive, previous
891 versions of tar used to overwrite last archive block with zeroes.
894 version 1.14 - Sergey Poznyakoff, 2004-05-11
896 * Added support for POSIX.1-2001 and ustar archive formats.
897 * New option --format allows to select the output archive format
898 * The default output format can be selected at configuration time
899 by presetting the environment variable DEFAULT_ARCHIVE_FORMAT.
900 Allowed values are GNU, V7, OLDGNU and POSIX.
901 * New option --strip-path allows to cut off a given number of
902 path elements from the name of the file being extracted.
904 * New options --index-file, --no-overwrite-dir. The --overwrite-dir
905 option is now the default; use --no-overwrite-dir if you prefer
906 the previous default behavior.
908 * The semantics of -o option is changed. When extracting, it
909 does the same as --no-same-owner GNU tar option. This is compatible
910 with UNIX98 tar. Otherwise, its effect is the same as that of
911 --old-archive option. This latter is deprecated and will be removed
914 * New option --check-links prints a message if not all links are dumped
915 for a file being archived. This corresponds to the UNIX98 -l option.
916 The current semantics of the -l option is retained for compatibility
917 with previous releases, however such usage is strongly deprecated as
918 the option will change to its UNIX98 semantics in the future releases.
920 * New option --occurrence[=N] can be used in conjunction with one of
921 the subcommands --delete, --diff, --extract or --list when a list of
922 files is given either on the command line or via -T option. This
923 option instructs tar to process only the Nth occurrence of each named
924 file. N defaults to 1, so 'tar -x -f archive --occurrence filename'
925 extracts the first occurrence of 'filename' from 'archive'
926 and terminates without scanning to the end of the archive.
928 * New option --pax-option allows to control the handling of POSIX
929 keywords in 'pax' extended headers. It is equivalent to 'pax'
932 * --incremental and --listed-incremental options work correctly on
933 individual files, as well as on directories.
935 * New scripts: backup (replaces old level-0 and level-1) and restore.
936 The scripts are compiled and installed if --enable-backup-scripts
937 option is given to configure.
939 * By default tar searches "rmt" utility in "$prefix/libexec/rmt",
940 which is consistent with the location where the version of "rmt"
941 included in the package is installed. Previous versions of tar
942 used "/etc/rmt". To install "rmt" to its traditional location,
943 run configure with option --libexecdir=/etc. Otherwise, if you
944 already have rmt installed and wish to use it, instead of the
945 shipped in version, set the variable DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND to
946 the full path name of the utility, e.g., ./configure
947 DEFAULT_RMT_COMMAND=/etc/rmt.
949 Notice also that the full path name of the "rmt" utility to
950 use can be set at runtime, by giving option --rmt-command to
953 * Removed obsolete command line options:
954 ** --absolute-paths superseded by --absolute-names
955 ** --block-compress is not needed any longer
956 ** --block-size superseded by --blocking-factor
957 ** --modification-time superseded by --touch
958 ** --read-full-blocks superseded by --read-full-records
959 ** --record-number superseded by --block-number
960 ** --version-control superseded by --backup
962 * New message translations fi (Finnish), gl (Galician), hr (Croatian),
963 hu (Hungarian), ms (Malaysian), nb (Norwegian), ro (Romanian), sk
964 (Slovak), zh_CN (Chinese simplified), zh_TW (Chinese traditional).
965 The code 'no' for Norwegian (Bokmål) has been withdrawn; use 'nb' instead.
970 version 1.13.25 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-26
975 version 1.13.24 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-22
977 * New option --overwrite-dir.
978 * Fixes for buffer overrun, porting, and copyright notice problems.
979 * The message translations for Korean are available again.
982 version 1.13.23 - Paul Eggert, 2001-09-13
984 * Bug, porting, and copyright notice fixes.
987 version 1.13.22 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-29
992 version 1.13.21 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-28
994 * Porting and copyright notice fixes.
997 version 1.13.20 - Paul Eggert, 2001-08-27
999 * Some bugs were fixed:
1001 - hard links to symbolic links
1003 * New option --recursion (the default) that is the inverse of --no-recursion.
1005 * New options --anchored, --ignore-case, --wildcards,
1006 --wildcards-match-slash, and their negations (e.g., --no-anchored).
1007 Along with --recursion and --no-recursion, these options control how
1008 exclude patterns are interpreted.
1010 * The default interpretation of exclude patterns is now --no-anchored
1011 --no-ignore-case --recursion --wildcards --wildcards-match-slash.
1012 This is a quiet change to the semantics of --exclude. The previous
1013 semantics were a failed attempt at backward compatibility but it
1014 became clear that the semantics were puzzling and did not satisfy
1015 everybody. Rather than continue to try to revive that dead horse we
1016 thought it better to substitute cleaner semantics, with options so
1017 that you can change the behavior more to your liking.
1019 * New message translations for Indonesian and Turkish.
1020 The translation for Korean has been withdrawn due to encoding errors.
1021 It will be reissued once those are fixed.
1024 version 1.13.19 - Paul Eggert, 2001-01-13
1026 * The -I option has been withdrawn, as it was buggy and confusing.
1027 Eventually it is planned to be reintroduced, with the same meaning as -T.
1029 * With an option like -N DATE, if DATE starts with "/" or ".", it is taken
1030 to be a file name; the last-modified time of that file is used as the date.
1033 version 1.13.18 - Paul Eggert, 2000-10-29
1035 * Some security problems have been fixed. 'tar -x' now modifies only
1036 files under the working directory, unless you also specify an unsafe
1037 option like --absolute-names or --overwrite.
1039 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -j,
1040 and -I is now an alias for -T, for compatibility with Solaris tar.
1042 * The manual is now distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
1044 * The new environment variable TAR_OPTIONS holds default command-line options.
1046 * The --no-recursion option now affects extraction too.
1048 * The wording in some diagnostics has been changed slightly.
1050 * Snapshot files now record whether each file was accessed via NFS.
1051 The new file format is upward- and downward-compatible with the old.
1053 * New language supported: da.
1055 * Compilation by traditional (K&R) C compilers is no longer supported.
1056 If you still use such a compiler, please use GCC instead.
1058 * This version of tar works best with GNU gzip test version 1.3 or later.
1059 Please see <ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/>.
1061 * 'tar --delete -f -' now works again.
1064 version 1.13.17 - Paul Eggert, 2000-01-07.
1066 * 'tar --delete -f -' is no longer allowed; it was too buggy.
1067 * Diagnostic messages have been made more regular and consistent.
1070 version 1.13.16 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-13.
1072 * By default, tar now refuses to overwrite an existing file when
1073 extracting files from an archive; instead, it removes the file
1074 before extracting it. If the existing file is a symbolic link, the
1075 link is removed and not the pointed-to file. There is one
1076 exception: existing nonempty directories are not removed, nor are
1077 their ownerships or permissions extracted. This fixes some
1078 longstanding security problems.
1080 The new --overwrite option enables the old default behavior.
1082 For regular files, tar implements this change by using the O_EXCL
1083 option of 'open' to ensure that it creates the file; if this fails, it
1084 removes the file and tries again. This is similar to the behavior of
1085 the --unlink-first option, but it is faster in the common case of
1086 extracting a new directory.
1088 * By default, tar now ignores file names containing a component of '..'
1089 when extracting, and warns about such file names when creating an archive.
1090 To enable the old behavior, use the -P or --absolute-names option.
1092 * Tar now handles file names with multibyte encodings (e.g., UTF-8, Shift-JIS)
1093 correctly. It relies on the mbrtowc function to handle multibyte characters.
1095 * The file generated by -g or --listed-incremental now uses a format
1096 that is independent of locale, so that users need not worry about
1097 locale when restoring a backup. This is needed for proper support
1098 of multibyte characters. Old-format files can still be read, and
1099 older versions of GNU tar can read new-format files, unless member
1100 names have multibyte chars.
1102 * Many diagnostics have been changed slightly, so that file names are
1103 now output unambiguously. File names in diagnostics now are either
1104 `quoted like this' (in the default C locale) or are followed by
1105 colon, newline, or space, depending on context. Unprintable
1106 characters are escaped with a C-like backslash conventions.
1107 Terminating characters (e.g., close-quote, colon, newline)
1108 are also escaped as needed.
1110 * tar now ignores socket files when creating an archive.
1111 Previously tar archived sockets as fifos, which caused problems.
1114 version 1.13.15 - Paul Eggert, 1999-12-03.
1116 * If a file's ctime changes when being archived, report an error.
1117 Previously tar looked at mtime, which missed some errors.
1120 version 1.13.14 - Paul Eggert, 1999-11-07.
1122 * New translations ja, pt_BR.
1123 * New options --help and --version for rmt.
1124 * Ignore Solaris door files when creating an archive.
1127 version 1.13.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-10-11.
1129 * Invalid headers in tar files now elicit errors, not just warnings.
1130 * 'tar --version' output conforms to the latest GNU coding standards.
1131 * If you specify an invalid date, 'tar' now substitutes (time_t) -1.
1132 * 'configure --with-dmalloc' is no longer available.
1135 version 1.13.12 - Paul Eggert, 1999-09-24.
1137 * 'tar' now supports hard links to symbolic links.
1139 * New options --no-same-owner, --no-same-permissions.
1141 * --total now also outputs a human-readable size, and a throughput value.
1143 * 'tar' now uses two's-complement base-256 when outputting header
1144 values that are out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8
1145 format. This affects archive members with negative or huge time
1146 stamps or uids, and archive members 8 GB or larger. The new tar
1147 archives cannot be read by traditional tar, or by older versions of
1148 GNU tar. Use the --old-archive option to revert to the old
1149 behavior, which uses unportable representations for negative values,
1150 and which rejects large files.
1152 * On 32-bit hosts, 'tar' now assumes that an incoming time stamp T in
1153 the range 2**31 <= T < 2**32 represents the negative time (T -
1154 2**32). This behavior is nonstandard and is not portable to 64-bit
1155 time_t hosts, so 'tar' issues a warning.
1157 * 'tar' no longer gives up extracting immediately upon discovering
1158 that an archive contains garbage at the end. It attempts to extract
1159 as many files as possible from the good data before the garbage.
1161 * A read error now causes a nonzero exit status, not just a warning.
1163 * Some diagnostics have been reworded for consistency.
1166 version 1.13.11 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-23.
1168 * The short name of the --bzip option has been changed to -I,
1169 for compatibility with paxutils.
1171 * -T /dev/null now matches nothing; previously, it matched anything
1172 if no explicit operands were given.
1174 * The '--' option now works the same as with other GNU utilities;
1175 it causes later operands to be interpreted as file names, not options,
1176 even if they begin with '-'.
1178 * For the --newer and --after-date options, the table of time zone
1179 abbreviations like 'EST' has been updated to match current practice.
1180 Also, local time abbreviations are now recognized, even if they are
1181 not in tar's hardwired table. Remember, though, that you should use
1182 numeric UTC offsets like '-0500' instead of abbreviations like
1183 'EST', as abbreviations are not standardized and are ambiguous.
1186 version 1.13.10 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-20.
1188 * 'tar' now uses signed base-64 when outputting header values that are
1189 out of the range of the standard unsigned base-8 format. [This
1190 change was superseded in 1.13.12, described above.]
1193 version 1.13.9 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-18.
1195 * 'tar' now writes two zero blocks at end-of-archive instead of just one.
1196 POSIX.1 requires this, and some other 'tar' implementations check for it.
1198 * 'tar' no longer silently accepts a block containing nonzero checksum bytes
1201 * 'tar' now reads buggy tar files that have a null byte at the start of a
1202 numeric header field.
1205 version 1.13.8 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-16.
1207 * For compatibility with traditional 'tar', intermediate directories
1208 created automatically by root are no longer given the uid and gid of
1209 the original file or directory.
1212 version 1.13.7 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-14.
1214 * --listed-incremental and --newer are now incompatible options.
1216 * When creating an archive, leading './' is no longer stripped,
1217 to match traditional tar's behavior (and simplify the documentation).
1219 * --diff without --absolute-names no longer falls back on absolute names.
1222 version 1.13.6 - Paul Eggert, 1999-08-11.
1224 * An --exclude pattern containing / now excludes a file only if it matches an
1225 initial prefix of the file name; a pattern without / continues to
1226 exclude a file if it matches any file name component.
1228 * The protocol for talking to rmt has been extended slightly.
1229 Open flags are now communicated in symbolic format as well as numeric.
1230 The symbolic format (e.g., "O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC") is for portability
1231 when rmt is operating on a different operating system from tar.
1232 The numeric format is retained, and rmt uses it if symbolic format is absent,
1233 for backward compatibility with older versions of tar and rmt.
1235 * When writing GNU tar format headers, tar now uses signed base-64
1236 for values that cannot be represented in unsigned octal.
1237 This supports larger files (2**66 - 1 bytes instead of 2**33 - 1 bytes),
1238 larger uids, negative time stamps, etc.
1240 * When extracting files with unknown ownership, tar now looks up the
1241 uid and gid "nobody" on hosts whose headers do not define UID_NOBODY
1242 and GID_NOBODY, and falls back on uid/gid -2 if there is no "nobody".
1244 * tar -t --numeric-owner now prints numeric uids and gids, not symbolic.
1246 * New option -y or --bzip2 for bzip2 compression, by popular request.
1249 version 1.13.5 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1251 * Do the delayed updates of file metadata even after a fatal error.
1254 version 1.13.4 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-20.
1256 * Do not chmod unless we are root or the -p option was given;
1257 this matches historical practice.
1260 version 1.13.3 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-16.
1262 * A path name is excluded if any of its file name components matches an
1263 excluded pattern, even if the path name was specified on the command line.
1264 Also see 1.13.6 for later changes in this area.
1267 version 1.13.2 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-14.
1269 * Bug reporting address changed to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.
1272 version 1.13.1 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-12.
1276 version 1.13 - Paul Eggert, 1999-07-08.
1278 * Support for large files, e.g., files larger than 2 GB on many 32-bit hosts.
1279 Also, support for larger uids, device ids, etc.
1280 * Many bug fixes and porting fixes.
1281 * This release is only for fixes. A more ambitious test release,
1282 with new features, is available as part of the paxutils. Please see:
1283 ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/paxutils/
1284 The fixes in this release are intended to be merged with paxutils
1285 at some point, but they haven't been merged yet.
1286 * An interim GNU tar alpha had new --bzip2 and --ending-file options,
1287 but they have been removed to maintain compatibility with paxutils.
1288 Please try --use=bzip2 instead of --bzip2.
1290 Version 1.12 - François Pinard, 1997-04.
1293 * Use shell globbing patterns for --label, instead of regular expressions.
1294 * Do not quote anymore internally over the quoting done by the shell.
1297 * Offer internationalization capabilities of most recent GNU gettext.
1298 * Messages available in many more languages, thanks to all translators!
1299 * Usage of ISO 8601 dates in listings, instead of local American dates.
1300 * More normalization and cleanup in error messages.
1303 * For helping using tar with find, offer a --no-recursion option.
1304 * Implement --numeric-owner for ignoring symbolic names at create time.
1305 * New --owner, --group --mode options, still preliminary.
1306 * Recognize creating an archive on /dev/null, so Amanda works faster.
1307 * Object to the creation of an empty archive (like in 'tar cf FILE').
1308 * Barely start implementing --posix and POSIXLY_CORRECT.
1311 * Make a better job at restoring file and directory attributes.
1312 * Automatically attempt deleting existing files when in the way.
1313 * Option --unlink-first (-U) removes most files prior to extraction.
1314 * Option --recursive-unlink removes non-empty directories when in the way.
1315 * Option --numeric-owner ignores owner/group names, it uses UID/GID instead.
1316 * Use global umask when creating missing intermediate directories.
1317 * When symlinks are not available, extract symbolic links as hard links.
1318 * Diagnose extraction of contiguous files as regular files.
1319 * New --backup, --suffix and --version-control options.
1322 * Better support of huge archives with --tape-length and --totals.
1323 * Rename option --read-full-blocks (-B) to --read-full-records (-B).
1324 * Rename option --block-size (-b) to --blocking-factor (-b).
1325 * Rename option --record-number (-R) to --block-number (-R).
1326 * With --block-number (-R), report null blocks and end of file.
1327 * Implement --record-size for introducing a size in bytes.
1328 * Delete --block-compress option and rather decide it automatically.
1329 * Rename option --modification-time to --touch.
1331 Many bugs are squashed, while others still run free.
1333 Version 1.11.8 - François Pinard, 1995-06.
1335 * Messages available in French, German, Portuguese and Swedish.
1336 * The distribution provides a rudimentary Texinfo manual.
1337 * The device defaults to stdin/stdout, unless overridden by the installer.
1338 * Option --sparse (-S) should work on more systems.
1339 * Option --rsh-command may select an alternative remote shell program.
1341 Most changes are internal, and should yield better portability.
1343 Version 1.11.2 - Michael Bushnell, 1993-03.
1345 * Changes in backup scripts: cleaned up considerably; notices error
1346 conditions better over rsh; DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT is now an option in
1347 backup-specs; new file dump-remind is an example of a
1350 * Superfluous "Reading dirname" was a bug; fixed.
1352 * Incompatibility problems with a bug on Solaris are fixed.
1354 * New option --gzip (aliases are --ungzip and -z); calls gzip instead
1355 of compress. Also, --use-compress-program lets you specify any
1356 compress program. --compress-block is renamed --block-compress and
1357 now requires one of the three compression options to be specified.
1359 * Several error messages are cleaned up.
1361 * Directory owners are now set properly when running as root.
1363 * Provide DUMP_REMIND_SCRIPT in backup-specs as a possible option
1366 * Behave better with broken rmt servers.
1368 * Dump scripts no longer use --atime-preserve; this causes a nasty probem.
1370 * Several Makefile cleanups.
1372 Version 1.11.1 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1376 Version 1.11 - Michael Bushnell, 1992-09.
1377 Version 1.10.16 - 1992-07.
1378 Version 1.10.15 - 1992-06.
1379 Version 1.10.14 - 1992-05.
1380 Version 1.10.13 - 1992-01.
1384 * Now uses GNU standard configure, generated by Autoconf.
1386 * Long options now use '--'; use of '+' is deprecated and support
1387 for it will eventually be removed.
1389 * New option --null causes filenames read by -T to be
1390 null-terminated, and causes -C to be ignored.
1392 * New option --remove-files deletes files (but not directories)
1393 after they are added to the archive.
1395 * New option --ignore-failed-read prevents read-errors from affecting
1398 * New option --checkpoint prints occasional messages as the tape
1399 is being read or written.
1401 * New option --show-omitted-dirs prints the names of directories
1402 omitted from the archive.
1404 * Some tape drives which use a non-standard method of indicating
1405 end-of-tape now work correctly with multi-tape archives.
1407 * --volno-file: Read the volume number used in prompting the user
1408 (but not in recording volume ID's on the archive) from a file.
1410 * When using --multi-volume, you can now give multiple -f arguments;
1411 the various tape drives will get used in sequence and then wrap
1412 around to the beginning.
1414 * Remote archive names no longer have to be in /dev: any file with a
1415 ':' is interpreted as remote. If new option --force-local is given,
1416 then even archive files with a ':' are considered local.
1418 * New option --atime-preserve restores (if possible) atimes to
1419 their original values after dumping the file.
1421 * No longer does tar confusingly dump "." when you don't tell it
1424 * When extracting directories, tar now correctly restores their
1425 modification and access times.
1427 * Longnames support is redone differently--long name info directly
1428 precedes the long-named file or link in the archive, so you no
1429 longer have to wait for the extract to hit the end of the tape for
1432 Version 1.10 - Michael Bushnell, 1991-07.
1434 * Filename to -G is optional. -C works right. Names +newer and
1435 +newer-mtime work right.
1437 * -g is now +incremental, -G is now +listed-incremental.
1439 * Sparse files now work correctly.
1441 * +volume is now called +label.
1443 * +exclude now takes a filename argument, and +exclude-from does
1444 what +exclude used to do.
1446 * Exit status is now correct.
1448 * +totals keeps track of total I/O and prints it when tar exits.
1450 * When using +label with +extract, the label is now a regexp.
1452 * New option +tape-length (-L) does multi-volume handling like BSD
1453 dump: you tell tar how big the tape is and it will prompt at that
1454 point instead of waiting for a write error.
1456 * New backup scripts level-0 and level-1 which might be useful
1457 to people. They use a file "backup-specs" for information, and
1458 shouldn't need local modification. These are what we use to do
1459 all our backups at the FSF.
1461 Version 1.09 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-10.
1462 Version 1.08 - Jay Fenlason, 1990-01.
1463 Versions 1.07 back to 1.00 by Jay Fenlason.
1465 * See ChangeLog for more details.
1469 Copyright 1994-2001, 2003-2010, 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1471 This file is part of GNU tar.
1473 GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
1474 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1475 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
1476 (at your option) any later version.
1478 GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1479 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1480 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1481 GNU General Public License for more details.
1483 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1484 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1488 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
1489 eval: (add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
1490 time-stamp-start: "changes. "
1491 time-stamp-format: "%:y-%02m-%02d"
1492 time-stamp-end: "\n"