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3.1 Copy-out mode | ||
3.2 Copy-in mode | ||
3.3 Copy-pass mode | ||
3.4 Options |
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In copy-out mode, cpio
copies files into an archive. It reads a list
of filenames, one per line, on the standard input, and writes the
archive onto the standard output. A typical way to generate the list
of filenames is with the find
command; you should give find
the ‘-depth’ option to minimize problems with permissions on
directories that are unreadable.
Copy-out mode is requested by the ‘-o’ (‘--create’) command line option, e.g.:
% find | cpio -o > directory.cpio |
The following options can be used in copy-out mode:
Filenames in the list are delimited by ASCII null characters instead of newlines.
Append to an existing archive.
Reset the access times of files after reading them.
Do not strip file system prefix components from the file names. This is the default.
Strip file system prefix components from the file names before storing them to the archive.
Sets the I/O block size to block-size * 512 bytes.
Set the I/O block size to 5120 bytes.
Use the old portable (ASCII) archive format.
Set the I/O block size to the given number of bytes.
Change to directory dir
Treat the archive file as local, even if its name contains colons.
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.
Use given archive format. See format, for a list of available formats.
Dereference symbolic links (copy the files that they point to instead of copying the links).
Print string when the end of a volume of the backup media is reached.
Do not print the number of blocks copied.
Use command instead of rsh
to access remote archives.
Set the ownership of all files created to the specified user and/or group. See owner.
Verbosely list the files processed.
Print a ‘.’ for each file processed.
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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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:
Do not strip file system prefix components from the file names. This is the default.
Create all files relative to the current directory.
Sets the I/O block size to block-size * 512 bytes.
Swap both halfwords of words and bytes of halfwords in the data. Equivalent to ‘-sS’.
Set the I/O block size to 5120 bytes.
Use the old portable (ASCII) archive format.
Set the I/O block size to the given number of bytes.
Change to directory dir
Create leading directories where needed.
Read additional patterns specifying filenames to extract or list from file.
Only copy files that do not match any of the given patterns.
Treat the archive file as local, even if its name contains colons.
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.
Use given archive format. See format, for a list of available formats.
Retain previous file modification times when creating files.
Print string when the end of a volume of the backup media is reached.
Do not change the ownership of the files.
In the verbose table of contents listing, show numeric UID and GID values.
When reading a CRC format archive, only verify the CRC’s of each file in the archive, don’t actually extract the files
Do not print the number of blocks copied.
Use command instead of rsh
to access remote archives.
Interactively rename files
Write files with large blocks of zeros as sparse files.
Swap the bytes of each halfword in the files
Swap the halfwords of each word (4 bytes) in the files
Extract files to standard output.
Replace all files unconditionally.
Verbosely list the files processed.
Print a ‘.’ for each file processed.
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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In copy-pass mode, cpio
copies files from one directory tree to
another, combining the copy-out and copy-in steps without actually
using an archive. It reads the list of files to copy from the
standard input; the directory into which it will copy them is given as
a non-option argument.
This mode is requested by the ‘-p’ (‘--pass-through’) command line option.
The following options are valid in copy-out mode:
Filenames in the list are delimited by ASCII null characters instead of newlines.
Reset the access times of files after reading them.
Swap both halfwords of words and bytes of halfwords in the data. Equivalent to ‘-sS’.
Sets the I/O block size to block-size * 512 bytes.
Set the I/O block size to 5120 bytes.
Use the old portable (ASCII) archive format.
Set the I/O block size to the given number of bytes.
Create leading directories where needed.
Create reproducible archives. This is equivalent to ‘--ignore-devno --ignore-dirnlink --renumber-inodes’.
Change to directory dir
Read additional patterns specifying filenames to extract or list from file.
Only copy files that do not match any of the given patterns.
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.
Treat the archive file as local, even if its name contains colons.
Use given archive format. See format, for a list of available formats.
Store 0 in the device number field of each archive member, instead of the actual device number.
Store 2 in the nlink
field of each directory archive member,
instead of the actual number of links.
Link files instead of copying them, when possible.
Dereference symbolic links (copy the files that they point to instead of copying the links).
Retain previous file modification times when creating files.
Print string when the end of a volume of the backup media is reached.
In the verbose table of contents listing, show numeric UID and GID values.
Do not change the ownership of the files.
When reading a CRC format archive, only verify the CRC’s of each file in the archive, don’t actually extract the files
Do not print the number of blocks copied.
Use command instead of rsh
to access remote archives.
Interactively rename files
Renumber inodes when storing them in the archive.
Set the ownership of all files created to the specified user and/or group. See owner.
Swap the bytes of each halfword in the files
Write files with large blocks of zeros as sparse files.
Swap the halfwords of each word (4 bytes) in the files
Extract files to standard output.
Replace all files unconditionally.
Verbosely list the files processed.
Print a ‘.’ for each file processed.
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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This section summarizes all available command line options. References
in square brackets after each option indicate cpio
modes in
which this option is valid.
-0
--null
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Read a list of filenames terminated by a null character, instead of a
newline, so that files whose names contain newlines can be archived.
GNU find
is one way to produce a list of null-terminated filenames.
This option may be used in copy-out and copy-pass modes.
-a
--reset-access-time
[copy-out,copy-pass]
Reset the access times of files after reading them, so
that it does not look like they have just been read.
-A
--append
[copy-out]
Append to an existing archive. Only works in copy-out
mode. The archive must be a disk file specified with
the ‘-O’ or ‘-F’ (‘--file’) option.
-b
--swap
[copy-in]
Swap both halfwords of words and bytes of halfwords in the data.
Equivalent to ‘-sS’. This option may be used in copy-in mode. Use this
option to convert 32-bit integers between big-endian and little-endian
machines.
-B
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Set the I/O block size to 5120 bytes. Initially the
block size is 512 bytes.
--block-size=block-size
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Set the I/O block size to block-size * 512 bytes.
-c
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Use the old portable (ASCII) archive format.
-C io-size
--io-size=io-size
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Set the I/O block size to io-size bytes.
-d
--make-directories
[copy-in,copy-pass]
Create leading directories where needed.
-D dir
--directory=dir
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Change to the directory dir before starting the operation. This
can be used, for example, to extract an archive contents in a
different directory:
$ cpio -i -D /usr/local < archive
or to copy-pass files from one directory to another:
$ cpio -D /usr/bin -p /usr/local/bin < filelist
The ‘-D’ option does not affect file names supplied as arguments to another command line options, such as ‘-F’ or ‘-E’. For example, the following invocation:
cpio -D /tmp/foo -d -i -F arc
instructs cpio
to open the archive file ‘arc’ in
the current working directory, then change to the directory
‘/tmp/foo’ and extract files to that directory. If
‘/tmp/foo’ does not exist, it will be created first (the
‘-d’ option) and then changed to.
-E file
--pattern-file=file
[copy-in]
Read additional patterns specifying filenames to extract or list from
file. The lines of file are treated as if they had been non-option
arguments to cpio
. This option is used in copy-in mode,
-f
--nonmatching
[copy-in]
Only copy files that do not match any of the given
patterns.
-F archive
--file=archive
[copy-in,copy-out]
Archive filename to use instead of standard input or output. To use a
tape drive on another machine as the archive, use a filename that starts
with ‘hostname:’, where hostname is the name or IP
address of the machine. The hostname can be preceded by a username and an
‘@’ to access the remote tape drive as that user, if you have
permission to do so (typically an entry in that user’s ‘~/.rhosts’
file).
--force-local
[copy-in,copy-out]
With ‘-F’, ‘-I’, or ‘-O’, take the archive file
name to be a local file even if it contains a colon, which would
ordinarily indicate a remote host name.
-H format
--format=format
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Use archive format format. The valid formats are listed below
with file size limits for individual files in parentheses; the same
names are also recognized in all-caps. The default in copy-in mode is
to automatically detect the archive format, and in copy-out mode is
‘bin’.
The obsolete binary format. (2147483647 bytes)
The old (POSIX.1) portable format. (8589934591 bytes)
The new (SVR4) portable format, which supports file systems having more than 65536 i-nodes. (4294967295 bytes)
The new (SVR4) portable format with a checksum added.
The old tar format. (8589934591 bytes)
The POSIX.1 tar format. Also recognizes GNU tar
archives, which are
similar but not identical. (8589934591 bytes)
The obsolete binary format used by HPUX’s cpio
(which stores device
files differently).
The portable format used by HPUX’s cpio
(which stores device files
differently).
-i
--extract
Run in copy-in mode. See section Copy-in mode.
-I archive
[copy-in]
Archive filename to use instead of standard input. To use a tape drive
on another machine as the archive, use a filename that starts with
‘hostname:’, where hostname is the name or IP address
of the remote host. The hostname can be preceded by a username and an
‘@’ to access the remote tape drive as that user, if you have
permission to do so (typically an entry in that user’s
‘~/.rhosts’ file).
-l
--link
[copy-pass]
Link files instead of copying them, when possible.
-L
--dereference
[copy-in,copy-pass]
Copy the file that a symbolic link points to, rather than the symbolic
link itself.
-m
--preserve-modification-time
[copy-in,copy-pass]
Retain previous file modification times when creating files.
-M message
--message=message
[copy-in,copy-out]
Print message when the end of a volume of the backup media (such as a
tape or a floppy disk) is reached, to prompt the user to insert a new
volume. If message contains the string ‘%d’, it is replaced by the
current volume number (starting at 1).
-n
--numeric-uid-gid
[copy-in]
Show numeric UID and GID instead of translating them into names when
using the ‘--verbose’ option.
--no-absolute-filenames
[copy-in,copy-out]
Create all files relative to the current directory in copy-in mode, even
if they have an absolute file name in the archive.
--no-preserve-owner
[copy-in,copy-pass]
Do not change the ownership of the files; leave them owned by the user
extracting them. This is the default for non-root users, so that users
on System V don’t inadvertantly give away files. This option can be
used in copy-in mode and copy-pass mode
-o
--create
Run in copy-out mode. See section Copy-out mode.
-O archive
[copy-out]
Archive filename to use instead of standard output. To use a tape drive
on another machine as the archive, use a filename that starts with
‘hostname:’, where hostname is the name or IP address
of the machine. The hostname can be preceded by a username and an ‘@’ to
access the remote tape drive as that user, if you have permission to do
so (typically an entry in that user’s ‘~/.rhosts’ file).
--only-verify-crc
[copy-in]
Verify the CRC’s of each file in the archive, when reading a CRC format
archive. Don’t actually extract the files.
-p
--pass-through
Run in copy-pass mode. See section Copy-pass mode.
--quiet
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Do not print the number of blocks copied.
-r
--rename
[copy-in]
Interactively rename files.
-R owner
--owner owner
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
In copy-in and copy-pass mode, set the ownership of all files created
to the specified owner (this operation is allowed only for the
super-user). In copy-out mode, store the supplied owner information in
the archive.
The argument can be either the user name or the user name and group name, separated by a dot or a colon, or the group name, preceeded by a dot or a colon, as shown in the examples below:
cpio --owner smith cpio --owner smith: cpio --owner smith:users cpio --owner :users
The argument parts are first looked up in the system user and group databases, correspondingly. If any of them is not found there, it is treated as numeric UID or GID, provided that it consists of decimal digits only.
To avoid the lookup and ensure that arguments are treated as numeric values, prefix them with a plus sign, e.g.:
cpio --owner +0 cpio --owner +0: cpio --owner +0:+0 cpio --owner :+0
If the group is omitted but the ‘:’ or ‘.’ separator is given, as in the second example. the given user’s login group will be used.
--rsh-command=command
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Notifies cpio
that is should use command to
communicate with remote devices.
-s
--swap-bytes
[copy-in]
Swap the bytes of each halfword (pair of bytes) in the files. This option
can be used in copy-in mode.
-S
--swap-halfwords
[copy-in]
Swap the halfwords of each word (4 bytes) in the files. This option may
be used in copy-in mode.
--sparse
[copy-in,copy-pass]
Write files with large blocks of zeros as sparse files. This option is
used in copy-in and copy-pass modes.
-t
--list
[copy-in]
Print a table of contents of the input. Can be used alone, as a
mode designator, in which case ‘-i’ is implied.
--to-stdout
[copy-in]
Extract files to standard output. This option may be used in copy-in mode.
-u
--unconditional
[copy-in,copy-pass]
Replace all files, without asking whether to replace
existing newer files with older files.
-v
--verbose
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
List the files processed, or with ‘-t’, give an ls -l
style
table of contents listing. In a verbose table of contents of a ustar
archive, user and group names in the archive that do not exist on the
local system are replaced by the names that correspond locally to the
numeric UID and GID stored in the archive.
-V
--dot
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Print a ‘.’ for each file processed.
--version
Print the cpio
program version number and exit.
-W
--warning=flag
[copy-in,copy-out,copy-pass]
Control warning display. The argument is one of the following:
Disable all warnings.
Enable all warnings.
Warn about truncation of file header fields.
Disable truncation warnings.
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