cpio: 3.2 Copy-in mode

3.2 Copy-in mode

In copy-in mode, cpio copies files from an archive into the filesystem or lists the archive contents. It reads the archive from the standard input. Any non-option command line arguments are shell globbing patterns; only files in the archive whose names match one or more of those patterns are copied from the archive. Unlike in the shell, an initial ‘.’ in a filename does match a wildcard at the start of a pattern, and a ‘/’ in a filename can match wildcards. If no patterns are given, all files are extracted.

The copy-in mode is requested by the ‘-i’ (‘--extract’) command line option.

The following options can be used in copy-in mode:

‘--absolute-filenames’: Do not strip file system prefix components from the file names. This is the default.
‘--no-absolute-filenames’: Create all files relative to the current directory.
‘--block-size=block-size’: Sets the I/O block size to block-size * 512 bytes.
‘-b’
‘--swap’: Swap both halfwords of words and bytes of halfwords in the data. Equivalent to ‘-sS’.
‘-B’: Set the I/O block size to 5120 bytes.
‘-c’: Use the old portable (ASCII) archive format.
‘-C number’
‘--io-size=number’: Set the I/O block size to the given number of bytes.
‘-D dir’
‘--directory=dir’: Change to directory dir
‘-d’
‘--make-directories’: Create leading directories where needed.
‘-E file’
‘--pattern-file=file’: Read additional patterns specifying filenames to extract or list from file.
‘-f’
‘--nonmatching’: Only copy files that do not match any of the given patterns.
‘--force-local’: Treat the archive file as local, even if its name contains colons.
‘-F [[user@]host:]archive-file’
‘-I [[user@]host:]archive-file’
‘--file=[[user@]host:]archive-file’: Use the supplied archive-file instead of standard input. Optional user and host specify the user and host names in case of a remote archive.
‘-H format’
‘--format=format’: Use given archive format. See format, for a list of available formats.
‘-m’
‘--preserve-modification-time’: Retain previous file modification times when creating files.
‘-M string’
‘--message=string’: Print string when the end of a volume of the backup media is reached.
‘--no-preserve-owner’: Do not change the ownership of the files.
‘-n’
‘--numeric-uid-gid’: In the verbose table of contents listing, show numeric UID and GID values.
‘--only-verify-crc’: When reading a CRC format archive, only verify the CRC’s of each file in the archive, don’t actually extract the files
‘--quiet’: Do not print the number of blocks copied.
‘--rsh-command=command’: Use command instead of rsh to access remote archives.
‘-r’
‘--rename’: Interactively rename files
‘--sparse’: Write files with large blocks of zeros as sparse files.
‘-s’
‘--swap-bytes’: Swap the bytes of each halfword in the files
‘-S’
‘--swap-halfwords’: Swap the halfwords of each word (4 bytes) in the files
‘--to-stdout’: Extract files to standard output.
‘-u’
‘--unconditional’: Replace all files unconditionally.
‘-v’
‘--verbose’: Verbosely list the files processed.
‘-V’
‘--dot’: Print a ‘.’ for each file processed.
‘-W’
‘--warning=flag’: Control warning display. Argument is one of ‘none’, ‘truncate’, ‘no-truncate’ or ‘all’. See warning, for a detailed discussion of these.

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