libarchive-formats(3)  FreeBSD Library Functions Manual  libarchive-formats(3)

NAME
     libarchive-formats -- archive formats supported by the libarchive library

DESCRIPTION
     The libarchive(3) library reads and writes a variety of streaming archive
     formats.  Generally speaking, all of these archive formats consist of a
     series of ``entries''.  Each entry stores a single file system object,
     such as a file, directory, or symbolic link.

     The following provides a brief description of each format supported by
     libarchive, with some information about recognized extensions or limita-
     tions of the current library support.  Note that just because a format is
     supported by libarchive does not imply that a program that uses
     libarchive will support that format.  Applications that use libarchive
     specify which formats they wish to support.

   Tar Formats
     The libarchive(3) library can read most tar archives.  However, it only
     writes POSIX-standard ``ustar'' and ``pax interchange'' formats.

     All tar formats store each entry in one or more 512-byte records.	The
     first record is used for file metadata, including filename, timestamp,
     and mode information, and the file data is stored in subsequent records.
     Later variants have extended this by either appropriating undefined areas
     of the header record, extending the header to multiple records, or by
     storing special entries that modify the interpretation of subsequent
     entries.

     gnutar  The libarchive(3) library can read GNU-format tar archives.  It
	     currently supports the most popular GNU extensions, including
	     modern long filename and linkname support, as well as atime and
	     ctime data.  The libarchive library does not support multi-volume
	     archives, nor the old GNU long filename format.  It can read GNU
	     sparse file entries, including the new POSIX-based formats, but
	     cannot write GNU sparse file entries.

     pax     The libarchive(3) library can read and write POSIX-compliant pax
	     interchange format archives.  Pax interchange format archives are
	     an extension of the older ustar format that adds a separate entry
	     with additional attributes stored as key/value pairs.  The pres-
	     ence of this additional entry is the only difference between pax
	     interchange format and the older ustar format.  The extended
	     attributes are of unlimited length and are stored as UTF-8 Uni-
	     code strings.  Keywords defined in the standard are in all lower-
	     case; vendors are allowed to define custom keys by preceding them
	     with the vendor name in all uppercase.  When writing pax ar-
	     chives, libarchive uses many of the SCHILY keys defined by Joerg
	     Schilling's ``star'' archiver.  The libarchive library can read
	     most of the SCHILY keys.  It silently ignores any keywords that
	     it does not understand.

     restricted pax
	     The libarchive library can also write pax archives in which it
	     attempts to suppress the extended attributes entry whenever pos-
	     sible.  The result will be identical to a ustar archive unless
	     the extended attributes entry is required to store a long file
	     name, long linkname, extended ACL, file flags, or if any of the
	     standard ustar data (user name, group name, UID, GID, etc) cannot
	     be fully represented in the ustar header.	In all cases, the
	     result can be dearchived by any program that can read POSIX-com-
	     pliant pax interchange format archives.  Programs that correctly
	     read ustar format (see below) will also be able to read this for-
	     mat; any extended attributes will be extracted as separate files
	     stored in PaxHeader directories.

     ustar   The libarchive library can both read and write this format.  This
	     format has the following limitations:
	     o	 Device major and minor numbers are limited to 21 bits.  Nodes
		 with larger numbers will not be added to the archive.
	     o	 Path names in the archive are limited to 255 bytes.  (Shorter
		 if there is no / character in exactly the right place.)
	     o	 Symbolic links and hard links are stored in the archive with
		 the name of the referenced file.  This name is limited to 100
		 bytes.
	     o	 Extended attributes, file flags, and other extended security
		 information cannot be stored.
	     o	 Archive entries are limited to 2 gigabytes in size.
	     Note that the pax interchange format has none of these restric-
	     tions.

     The libarchive library can also read a variety of commonly-used exten-
     sions to the basic tar format.  In particular, it supports base-256 val-
     ues in certain numeric fields.  This essentially removes the limitations
     on file size, modification time, and device numbers.

     The first tar program appeared in Seventh Edition Unix in 1979.  The
     first official standard for the tar file format was the ``ustar'' (Unix
     Standard Tar) format defined by POSIX in 1988.  POSIX.1-2001 extended the
     ustar format to create the ``pax interchange'' format.

   Cpio Formats
     The libarchive library can read a number of common cpio variants and can
     write ``odc'' and ``newc'' format archives.  A cpio archive stores each
     entry as a fixed-size header followed by a variable-length filename and
     variable-length data.  Unlike tar, cpio does only minimal padding of the
     header or file data.  There are a variety of cpio formats, which differ
     primarily in how they store the initial header: some store the values as
     octal or hexadecimal numbers in ASCII, others as binary values of varying
     byte order and length.

     binary  The libarchive library can read both big-endian and little-endian
	     variants of the original binary cpio format.  This format used
	     32-bit binary values for file size and mtime, and 16-bit binary
	     values for the other fields.

     odc     The libarchive library can both read and write this POSIX-stan-
	     dard format.  This format stores the header contents as octal
	     values in ASCII.  It is standard, portable, and immune from byte-
	     order confusion.  File sizes and mtime are limited to 33 bits
	     (8GB file size), other fields are limited to 18 bits.

     SVR4    The libarchive library can read both CRC and non-CRC variants of
	     this format.  The SVR4 format uses eight-digit hexadecimal values
	     for all header fields.  This limits file size to 4GB, and also
	     limits the mtime and other fields to 32 bits.  The SVR4 format
	     can optionally include a CRC of the file contents, although
	     libarchive does not currently verify this CRC.

     Cpio first appeared in PWB/UNIX 1.0, which was released within AT&T in
     1977.  PWB/UNIX 1.0 formed the basis of System III Unix, released outside
     of AT&T in 1981.  This makes cpio older than tar, although cpio was not
     included in Version 7 AT&T Unix.  As a result, the tar command became
     much better known in universities and research groups that used Version
     7.  The combination of the find and cpio utilities provided very precise
     control over file selection.  Unfortunately, the format has many limita-
     tions that make it unsuitable for widespread use.	Only the POSIX format
     permits files over 4GB, and its 18-bit limit for most other fields makes
     it unsuitable for modern systems.	In addition, cpio formats only store
     numeric UID/GID values (not usernames and group names), which can make it
     very difficult to correctly transfer archives across systems with dissim-
     ilar user numbering.

   Shar Formats
     A ``shell archive'' is a shell script that, when executed on a POSIX-com-
     pliant system, will recreate a collection of file system objects.	The
     libarchive library can write two different kinds of shar archives:

     shar    The traditional shar format uses a limited set of POSIX commands,
	     including echo(1), mkdir(1), and sed(1).  It is suitable for
	     portably archiving small collections of plain text files.	How-
	     ever, it is not generally well-suited for large archives (many
	     implementations of sh(1) have limits on the size of a script) nor
	     should it be used with non-text files.

     shardump
	     This format is similar to shar but encodes files using
	     uuencode(1) so that the result will be a plain text file regard-
	     less of the file contents.  It also includes additional shell
	     commands that attempt to reproduce as many file attributes as
	     possible, including owner, mode, and flags.  The additional com-
	     mands used to restore file attributes make shardump archives less
	     portable than plain shar archives.

   ISO9660 format
     Libarchive can read and extract from files containing ISO9660-compliant
     CDROM images.  It also has partial support for Rockridge extensions.  In
     many cases, this can remove the need to burn a physical CDROM.  It also
     avoids security and complexity issues that come with virtual mounts and
     loopback devices.

   Zip format
     Libarchive can extract from most zip format archives.  It currently only
     supports uncompressed entries and entries compressed with the ``deflate''
     algorithm.  Older zip compression algorithms are not supported.

   Archive (library) file format
     The Unix archive format (commonly created by the ar(1) archiver) is a
     general-purpose format which is used almost exclusively for object files
     to be read by the link editor ld(1).  The ar format has never been stan-
     dardised.	There are two common variants: the GNU format derived from
     SVR4, and the BSD format, which first appeared in 4.4BSD.	Libarchive
     provides read and write support for both variants.

   mtree
     Libarchive can read files in mtree(5) format. This format is not a true
     archive format, but rather a description of a file hierarchy. When
     requested, libarchive obtains the contents of the files described by the
     mtree(5) format from files on disk instead.

SEE ALSO
     ar(1), cpio(1), mkisofs(1), shar(1), tar(1), zip(1), zlib(3), cpio(5),
     mtree(5), tar(5)

FreeBSD 6.0			April 27, 2004			   FreeBSD 6.0
