File and Archiving Commands

            File and Archiving Commands for reference of linux users

tar

The standard UNIX archiving utility. Originally a Tape ARchiving program, it has developed into a general purpose package that can handle all manner of archiving with all types of destination devices, ranging from tape drives to regular files to even stdout . GNU tar has been patched to accept various compression filters, for example: tar czvf archive_name.tar.gz *, which recursively archives and gzips all files in a directory tree except dotfiles in the current working directory ($PWD). 

Some useful tar options:

1. -c create (a new archive)

2. -x extract (files from existing archive)

3. --delete delete (files from existing archive)

   This option will not work on magnetic tape devices.

4. -r append (files to existing archive)

5. -A append (tar files to existing archive)

6. -t list (contents of existing archive)

7. -u update archive

8. -d compare archive with specified filesystem

9. --after-date only process files with a date stamp after specified date

10. -z gzip the archive

    (compress or uncompress, depending on whether combined with the -c or -x) option

11. -j bzip2 the archive

It may be difficult to recover data from a corrupted gzipped tar archive. When archiving important files, make multiple backups.

shar

Shell archiving utility. The files in a shell archive are concatenated without compression, and the resultant archive is essentially a shell script, complete with #!/bin/sh header, and containing all the necessary unarchiving commands. Shar archives still show up in Usenet newsgroups, but otherwise shar has been pretty well replaced by tar/gzip. The unshar command unpacks shar archives.

ar

Creation and manipulation utility for archives, mainly used for binary object file libraries.

rpm

The Red Hat Package Manager, or rpm utility provides a wrapper for source or binary archives. It includes commands for installing and checking the integrity of packages, among other things.

A simple rpm -i package_name.rpm usually suffices to install a package, though there are many more options available.

rpm -qf identifies which package a file originates from. bash$ rpm -qf /bin/ls coreutils-5.2.1-31

rpm -qa gives a complete list of all installed rpm packages on a given system. An rpm -qa package_name lists only the package(s) corresponding to package_name. bash$ rpm -qa redhat-logos-1.1.3-1 glibc-2.2.4-13 cracklib-2.7-12 dosfstools-2.7-1 gdbm-1.8.0-10 ksymoops-2.4.1-1 mktemp-1.5-11 perl-5.6.0-17 reiserfs-utils-3.x.0j-2 ... bash$ rpm -qa docbook-utils docbook-utils-0.6.9-2 bash$ rpm -qa docbook | grep docbook docbook-dtd31-sgml-1.0-10 docbook-style-dsssl-1.64-3 docbook-dtd30-sgml-1.0-10 docbook-dtd40-sgml-1.0-11 docbook-utils-pdf-0.6.9-2 docbook-dtd41-sgml-1.0-10 docbook-utils-0.6.9-2

cpio

This specialized archiving copy command (copy input and output) is rarely seen any more, having been supplanted by tar/gzip. It still has its uses, such as moving a directory tree. With an appropriate block size (for copying) specified, it can be appreciably faster than tar.

Example 15-30. Using cpio to move a directory tree

#!/bin/bash # Copying a directory tree using cpio. # Advantages of using 'cpio': # Speed of copying. It's faster than 'tar' with pipes. # Well suited for copying special files (named pipes, etc.) #+ that 'cp' may choke on. ARGS=2 E_BADARGS=65 if [ $# -ne "$ARGS" ] then echo "Usage: `basename $0` source destination" exit $E_BADARGS fi source="$1" destination="$2" ################################################################### find "$source" -depth | cpio -admvp "$destination" # ^^^^^ ^^^^^ # Read the 'find' and 'cpio' info pages to decipher these options. # The above works only relative to $PWD (current directory) . . . #+ full pathnames are specified. ################################################################### # Exercise: # -------- # Add code to check the exit status ($?) of the 'find | cpio' pipe #+ and output appropriate error messages if anything went wrong. exit $?

rpm2cpio

This command extracts a cpio archive from an rpm one.

Example 15-31. Unpacking an rpm archive

#!/bin/bash # de-rpm.sh: Unpack an 'rpm' archive : ${1?"Usage: `basename $0` target-file"} # Must specify 'rpm' archive name as an argument. TEMPFILE=$$.cpio # Tempfile with "unique" name. # $$ is process ID of script. rpm2cpio < $1 > $TEMPFILE # Converts rpm archive into #+ cpio archive. cpio --make-directories -F $TEMPFILE -i # Unpacks cpio archive. rm -f $TEMPFILE # Deletes cpio archive. exit 0 # Exercise: # Add check for whether 1) "target-file" exists and #+ 2) it is an rpm archive. # Hint: Parse output of 'file' command.