While an archive may contain many files, the archive itself is a
single ordinary file. Like any other file, an archive file can be
written to a storage device such as a tape or disk, sent through a
pipe or over a network, saved on the active file system, or even
stored in another archive. An archive file is not easy to read or
manipulate without using the tar utility or Tar mode in
GNU Emacs.
Physically, an archive consists of a series of file entries terminated
by an end-of-archive entry, which consists of two 512 blocks of zero
bytes. A file
entry usually describes one of the files in the archive (an
archive member), and consists of a file header and the contents
of the file. File headers contain file names and statistics, checksum
information which tar uses to detect file corruption, and
information about file types.
Archives are permitted to have more than one member with the same
member name. One way this situation can occur is if more than one
version of a file has been stored in the archive. For information
about adding new versions of a file to an archive, see update.
In addition to entries describing archive members, an archive may
contain entries which tar itself uses to store information.
See label, for an example of such an archive entry.
A tar archive file contains a series of blocks. Each block
contains BLOCKSIZE bytes. Although this format may be thought
of as being on magnetic tape, other media are often used.
Each file archived is represented by a header block which describes
the file, followed by zero or more blocks which give the contents
of the file. At the end of the archive file there are two 512-byte blocks
filled with binary zeros as an end-of-file marker. A reasonable system
should write such end-of-file marker at the end of an archive, but
must not assume that such a block exists when reading an archive. In
particular GNU tar always issues a warning if it does not encounter it.
The blocks may be blocked for physical I/O operations.
Each record of n blocks (where n is set by the
--blocking-factor=512-size (-b 512-size) option to tar) is written with a single
‘write ()’ operation. On magnetic tapes, the result of
such a write is a single record. When writing an archive,
the last record of blocks should be written at the full size, with
blocks after the zero block containing all zeros. When reading
an archive, a reasonable system should properly handle an archive
whose last record is shorter than the rest, or which contains garbage
records after a zero block.
The header block is defined in C as follows. In the GNU tar
distribution, this is part of file src/tar.h:
/* GNU tar Archive Format description.
Copyright (C) 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997,
2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. */
/* tar Header Block, from POSIX 1003.1-1990. */
/* POSIX header. */
struct posix_header
{ /* byte offset */
char name[100]; /* 0 */
char mode[8]; /* 100 */
char uid[8]; /* 108 */
char gid[8]; /* 116 */
char size[12]; /* 124 */
char mtime[12]; /* 136 */
char chksum[8]; /* 148 */
char typeflag; /* 156 */
char linkname[100]; /* 157 */
char magic[6]; /* 257 */
char version[2]; /* 263 */
char uname[32]; /* 265 */
char gname[32]; /* 297 */
char devmajor[8]; /* 329 */
char devminor[8]; /* 337 */
char prefix[155]; /* 345 */
/* 500 */
};
#define TMAGIC "ustar" /* ustar and a null */
#define TMAGLEN 6
#define TVERSION "00" /* 00 and no null */
#define TVERSLEN 2
/* Values used in typeflag field. */
#define REGTYPE '0' /* regular file */
#define AREGTYPE '\0' /* regular file */
#define LNKTYPE '1' /* link */
#define SYMTYPE '2' /* reserved */
#define CHRTYPE '3' /* character special */
#define BLKTYPE '4' /* block special */
#define DIRTYPE '5' /* directory */
#define FIFOTYPE '6' /* FIFO special */
#define CONTTYPE '7' /* reserved */
#define XHDTYPE 'x' /* Extended header referring to the
next file in the archive */
#define XGLTYPE 'g' /* Global extended header */
/* Bits used in the mode field, values in octal. */
#define TSUID 04000 /* set UID on execution */
#define TSGID 02000 /* set GID on execution */
#define TSVTX 01000 /* reserved */
/* file permissions */
#define TUREAD 00400 /* read by owner */
#define TUWRITE 00200 /* write by owner */
#define TUEXEC 00100 /* execute/search by owner */
#define TGREAD 00040 /* read by group */
#define TGWRITE 00020 /* write by group */
#define TGEXEC 00010 /* execute/search by group */
#define TOREAD 00004 /* read by other */
#define TOWRITE 00002 /* write by other */
#define TOEXEC 00001 /* execute/search by other */
/* tar Header Block, GNU extensions. */
/* In GNU tar, SYMTYPE is for to symbolic links, and CONTTYPE is for
contiguous files, so maybe disobeying the `reserved' comment in POSIX
header description. I suspect these were meant to be used this way, and
should not have really been `reserved' in the published standards. */
/* *BEWARE* *BEWARE* *BEWARE* that the following information is still
boiling, and may change. Even if the OLDGNU format description should be
accurate, the so-called GNU format is not yet fully decided. It is
surely meant to use only extensions allowed by POSIX, but the sketch
below repeats some ugliness from the OLDGNU format, which should rather
go away. Sparse files should be saved in such a way that they do *not*
require two passes at archive creation time. Huge files get some POSIX
fields to overflow, alternate solutions have to be sought for this. */
/* Descriptor for a single file hole. */
struct sparse
{ /* byte offset */
char offset[12]; /* 0 */
char numbytes[12]; /* 12 */
/* 24 */
};
/* Sparse files are not supported in POSIX ustar format. For sparse files
with a POSIX header, a GNU extra header is provided which holds overall
sparse information and a few sparse descriptors. When an old GNU header
replaces both the POSIX header and the GNU extra header, it holds some
sparse descriptors too. Whether POSIX or not, if more sparse descriptors
are still needed, they are put into as many successive sparse headers as
necessary. The following constants tell how many sparse descriptors fit
in each kind of header able to hold them. */
#define SPARSES_IN_EXTRA_HEADER 16
#define SPARSES_IN_OLDGNU_HEADER 4
#define SPARSES_IN_SPARSE_HEADER 21
/* Extension header for sparse files, used immediately after the GNU extra
header, and used only if all sparse information cannot fit into that
extra header. There might even be many such extension headers, one after
the other, until all sparse information has been recorded. */
struct sparse_header
{ /* byte offset */
struct sparse sp[SPARSES_IN_SPARSE_HEADER];
/* 0 */
char isextended; /* 504 */
/* 505 */
};
/* The old GNU format header conflicts with POSIX format in such a way that
POSIX archives may fool old GNU tar's, and POSIX tar's might well be
fooled by old GNU tar archives. An old GNU format header uses the space
used by the prefix field in a POSIX header, and cumulates information
normally found in a GNU extra header. With an old GNU tar header, we
never see any POSIX header nor GNU extra header. Supplementary sparse
headers are allowed, however. */
struct oldgnu_header
{ /* byte offset */
char unused_pad1[345]; /* 0 */
char atime[12]; /* 345 Incr. archive: atime of the file */
char ctime[12]; /* 357 Incr. archive: ctime of the file */
char offset[12]; /* 369 Multivolume archive: the offset of
the start of this volume */
char longnames[4]; /* 381 Not used */
char unused_pad2; /* 385 */
struct sparse sp[SPARSES_IN_OLDGNU_HEADER];
/* 386 */
char isextended; /* 482 Sparse file: Extension sparse header
follows */
char realsize[12]; /* 483 Sparse file: Real size*/
/* 495 */
};
/* OLDGNU_MAGIC uses both magic and version fields, which are contiguous.
Found in an archive, it indicates an old GNU header format, which will be
hopefully become obsolescent. With OLDGNU_MAGIC, uname and gname are
valid, though the header is not truly POSIX conforming. */
#define OLDGNU_MAGIC "ustar " /* 7 chars and a null */
/* The standards committee allows only capital A through capital Z for
user-defined expansion. Other letters in use include:
'A' Solaris Access Control List
'E' Solaris Extended Attribute File
'I' Inode only, as in 'star'
'X' POSIX 1003.1-2001 eXtended (VU version) */
/* This is a dir entry that contains the names of files that were in the
dir at the time the dump was made. */
#define GNUTYPE_DUMPDIR 'D'
/* Identifies the *next* file on the tape as having a long linkname. */
#define GNUTYPE_LONGLINK 'K'
/* Identifies the *next* file on the tape as having a long name. */
#define GNUTYPE_LONGNAME 'L'
/* This is the continuation of a file that began on another volume. */
#define GNUTYPE_MULTIVOL 'M'
/* For storing filenames that do not fit into the main header. */
#define GNUTYPE_NAMES 'N'
/* This is for sparse files. */
#define GNUTYPE_SPARSE 'S'
/* This file is a tape/volume header. Ignore it on extraction. */
#define GNUTYPE_VOLHDR 'V'
/* Solaris extended header */
#define SOLARIS_XHDTYPE 'X'
/* Jörg Schilling star header */
struct star_header
{ /* byte offset */
char name[100]; /* 0 */
char mode[8]; /* 100 */
char uid[8]; /* 108 */
char gid[8]; /* 116 */
char size[12]; /* 124 */
char mtime[12]; /* 136 */
char chksum[8]; /* 148 */
char typeflag; /* 156 */
char linkname[100]; /* 157 */
char magic[6]; /* 257 */
char version[2]; /* 263 */
char uname[32]; /* 265 */
char gname[32]; /* 297 */
char devmajor[8]; /* 329 */
char devminor[8]; /* 337 */
char prefix[131]; /* 345 */
char atime[12]; /* 476 */
char ctime[12]; /* 488 */
/* 500 */
};
#define SPARSES_IN_STAR_HEADER 4
#define SPARSES_IN_STAR_EXT_HEADER 21
struct star_in_header {
char fill[345]; /* 0 Everything that is before t_prefix */
char prefix[1]; /* 345 t_name prefix */
char fill2; /* 346 */
char fill3[8]; /* 347 */
char isextended; /* 355 */
struct sparse sp[SPARSES_IN_STAR_HEADER]; /* 356 */
char realsize[12]; /* 452 Actual size of the file */
char offset[12]; /* 464 Offset of multivolume contents */
char atime[12]; /* 476 */
char ctime[12]; /* 488 */
char mfill[8]; /* 500 */
char xmagic[4]; /* 508 "tar" */
};
struct star_ext_header {
struct sparse sp[SPARSES_IN_STAR_EXT_HEADER];
char isextended;
};
/* tar Header Block, overall structure. */
/* tar files are made in basic blocks of this size. */
#define BLOCKSIZE 512
enum archive_format
{
DEFAULT_FORMAT, /* format to be decided later */
V7_FORMAT, /* old V7 tar format */
OLDGNU_FORMAT, /* GNU format as per before tar 1.12 */
USTAR_FORMAT, /* POSIX.1-1988 (ustar) format */
POSIX_FORMAT, /* POSIX.1-2001 format */
STAR_FORMAT, /* Star format defined in 1994 */
GNU_FORMAT /* Same as OLDGNU_FORMAT with one exception:
see FIXME note for to_chars() function
(create.c:189) */
};
/* Information about a sparse file. */
struct sp_array
{
off_t offset;
size_t numbytes;
};
struct tar_stat_info
{
char *orig_file_name; /* name of file read from the archive header */
char *file_name; /* name of file for the current archive entry
after being normalized. */
bool had_trailing_slash; /* true if the current archive entry had a
trailing slash before it was normalized. */
char *link_name; /* name of link for the current archive entry. */
char *uname; /* user name of owner */
char *gname; /* group name of owner */
struct stat stat; /* regular filesystem stat */
/* STAT doesn't always have access, data modification, and status
change times in a convenient form, so store them separately. */
struct timespec atime;
struct timespec mtime;
struct timespec ctime;
off_t archive_file_size; /* Size of file as stored in the archive.
Equals stat.st_size for non-sparse files */
bool is_sparse; /* Is the file sparse */
/* For sparse files: */
size_t sparse_map_avail; /* Index to the first unused element in
sparse_map array. Zero if the file is
not sparse */
size_t sparse_map_size; /* Size of the sparse map */
struct sp_array *sparse_map;
/* For dumpdirs */
bool is_dumpdir; /* Is the member a dumpdir? */
bool skipped; /* The member contents is already read
(for GNUTYPE_DUMPDIR) */
char *dumpdir; /* Contents of the dump directory */
};
union block
{
char buffer[BLOCKSIZE];
struct posix_header header;
struct star_header star_header;
struct oldgnu_header oldgnu_header;
struct sparse_header sparse_header;
struct star_in_header star_in_header;
struct star_ext_header star_ext_header;
};
/* End of Format description. */
All characters in header blocks are represented by using 8-bit
characters in the local variant of ASCII. Each field within the
structure is contiguous; that is, there is no padding used within
the structure. Each character on the archive medium is stored
contiguously.
Bytes representing the contents of files (after the header block
of each file) are not translated in any way and are not constrained
to represent characters in any character set. The tar format
does not distinguish text files from binary files, and no translation
of file contents is performed.
The name, linkname, magic, uname, and
gname are null-terminated character strings. All other fields
are zero-filled octal numbers in ASCII. Each numeric field of width
w contains w minus 1 digits, and a null.
The name field is the file name of the file, with directory names
(if any) preceding the file name, separated by slashes.
The mode field provides nine bits specifying file permissions
and three bits to specify the Set UID, Set GID, and Save Text
(sticky) modes. Values for these bits are defined above.
When special permissions are required to create a file with a given
mode, and the user restoring files from the archive does not hold such
permissions, the mode bit(s) specifying those special permissions
are ignored. Modes which are not supported by the operating system
restoring files from the archive will be ignored. Unsupported modes
should be faked up when creating or updating an archive; e.g., the
group permission could be copied from the other permission.
The uid and gid fields are the numeric user and group
ID of the file owners, respectively. If the operating system does
not support numeric user or group IDs, these fields should be ignored.
The size field is the size of the file in bytes; linked files
are archived with this field specified as zero.
The mtime field is the data modification time of the file at
the time it was archived. It is the ASCII representation of the octal
value of the last time the file's contents were modified, represented
as an integer number of
seconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00 Coordinated Universal Time.
The chksum field is the ASCII representation of the octal value
of the simple sum of all bytes in the header block. Each 8-bit
byte in the header is added to an unsigned integer, initialized to
zero, the precision of which shall be no less than seventeen bits.
When calculating the checksum, the chksum field is treated as
if it were all blanks.
The typeflag field specifies the type of file archived. If a
particular implementation does not recognize or permit the specified
type, the file will be extracted as if it were a regular file. As this
action occurs, tar issues a warning to the standard error.
The atime and ctime fields are used in making incremental
backups; they store, respectively, the particular file's access and
status change times.
The offset is used by the --multi-volume (-M) option, when
making a multi-volume archive. The offset is number of bytes into
the file that we need to restart at to continue the file on the next
tape, i.e., where we store the location that a continued file is
continued at.
The following fields were added to deal with sparse files. A file
is sparse if it takes in unallocated blocks which end up being
represented as zeros, i.e., no useful data. A test to see if a file
is sparse is to look at the number blocks allocated for it versus the
number of characters in the file; if there are fewer blocks allocated
for the file than would normally be allocated for a file of that
size, then the file is sparse. This is the method tar uses to
detect a sparse file, and once such a file is detected, it is treated
differently from non-sparse files.
Sparse files are often dbm files, or other database-type files
which have data at some points and emptiness in the greater part of
the file. Such files can appear to be very large when an ‘ls
-l’ is done on them, when in truth, there may be a very small amount
of important data contained in the file. It is thus undesirable
to have tar think that it must back up this entire file, as
great quantities of room are wasted on empty blocks, which can lead
to running out of room on a tape far earlier than is necessary.
Thus, sparse files are dealt with so that these empty blocks are
not written to the tape. Instead, what is written to the tape is a
description, of sorts, of the sparse file: where the holes are, how
big the holes are, and how much data is found at the end of the hole.
This way, the file takes up potentially far less room on the tape,
and when the file is extracted later on, it will look exactly the way
it looked beforehand. The following is a description of the fields
used to handle a sparse file:
The sp is an array of struct sparse. Each struct
sparse contains two 12-character strings which represent an offset
into the file and a number of bytes to be written at that offset.
The offset is absolute, and not relative to the offset in preceding
array element.
The header can hold four of these struct sparse at the moment;
if more are needed, they are not stored in the header.
The isextended flag is set when an extended_header
is needed to deal with a file. Note that this means that this flag
can only be set when dealing with a sparse file, and it is only set
in the event that the description of the file will not fit in the
allotted room for sparse structures in the header. In other words,
an extended_header is needed.
The extended_header structure is used for sparse files which
need more sparse structures than can fit in the header. The header can
fit 4 such structures; if more are needed, the flag isextended
gets set and the next block is an extended_header.
Each extended_header structure contains an array of 21
sparse structures, along with a similar isextended flag
that the header had. There can be an indeterminate number of such
extended_headers to describe a sparse file.
REGTYPE
AREGTYPE
These flags represent a regular file. In order to be compatible
with older versions of tar, a typeflag value of
AREGTYPE should be silently recognized as a regular file.
New archives should be created using REGTYPE. Also, for
backward compatibility, tar treats a regular file whose name
ends with a slash as a directory.
LNKTYPE
This flag represents a file linked to another file, of any type,
previously archived. Such files are identified in Unix by each
file having the same device and inode number. The linked-to name is
specified in the linkname field with a trailing null.
SYMTYPE
This represents a symbolic link to another file. The linked-to name
is specified in the linkname field with a trailing null.
CHRTYPE
BLKTYPE
These represent character special files and block special files
respectively. In this case the devmajor and devminor
fields will contain the major and minor device numbers respectively.
Operating systems may map the device specifications to their own
local specification, or may ignore the entry.
DIRTYPE
This flag specifies a directory or sub-directory. The directory
name in the name field should end with a slash. On systems where
disk allocation is performed on a directory basis, the size field
will contain the maximum number of bytes (which may be rounded to
the nearest disk block allocation unit) which the directory may
hold. A size field of zero indicates no such limiting. Systems
which do not support limiting in this manner should ignore the
size field.
FIFOTYPE
This specifies a FIFO special file. Note that the archiving of a
FIFO file archives the existence of this file and not its contents.
CONTTYPE
This specifies a contiguous file, which is the same as a normal
file except that, in operating systems which support it, all its
space is allocated contiguously on the disk. Operating systems
which do not allow contiguous allocation should silently treat this
type as a normal file.
A ... Z
These are reserved for custom implementations. Some of these are
used in the GNU modified format, as described below.
Other values are reserved for specification in future revisions of
the P1003 standard, and should not be used by any tar program.
The magic field indicates that this archive was output in
the P1003 archive format. If this field contains TMAGIC,
the uname and gname fields will contain the ASCII
representation of the owner and group of the file respectively.
If found, the user and group IDs are used rather than the values in
the uid and gid fields.
For references, see ISO/IEC 9945-1:1990 or IEEE Std 1003.1-1990, pages
169-173 (section 10.1) for Archive/Interchange File Format; and
IEEE Std 1003.2-1992, pages 380-388 (section 4.48) and pages 936-940
(section E.4.48) for pax - Portable archive interchange.
Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License
