(tar) Standard
(tar) Attributes
(tar) Formats
(tar) Extensions
The Standard Format
===================
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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 512 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.
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 may be a block filled
with binary zeros as an end-of-file marker. A reasonable system should
write a block of zeros at the end, but must not assume that such a
block exists when reading an archive.
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 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.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. */
/* If OLDGNU_COMPATIBILITY is not zero, tar produces archives which, by
default, are readable by older versions of GNU tar. This can be
overriden by using --posix; in this case, POSIXLY_CORRECT in environment
may be set for enforcing stricter conformance. If OLDGNU_COMPATIBILITY
is zero or undefined, tar will eventually produces archives which, by
default, POSIX compatible; then either using --posix or defining
POSIXLY_CORRECT enforces stricter conformance.
This #define will disappear in a few years. FP, June 1995. */
#define OLDGNU_COMPATIBILITY 1
/* 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 */
/* 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
/* The GNU extra header contains some information GNU tar needs, but not
foreseen in POSIX header format. It is only used after a POSIX header
(and never with old GNU headers), and immediately follows this POSIX
header, when typeflag is a letter rather than a digit, so signaling a GNU
extension. */
struct extra_header
{ /* byte offset */
char atime[12]; /* 0 */
char ctime[12]; /* 12 */
char offset[12]; /* 24 */
char realsize[12]; /* 36 */
char longnames[4]; /* 48 */
char unused_pad1[68]; /* 52 */
struct sparse sp[SPARSES_IN_EXTRA_HEADER];
/* 120 */
char isextended; /* 504 */
/* 505 */
};
/* 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 */
char ctime[12]; /* 357 */
char offset[12]; /* 369 */
char longnames[4]; /* 381 */
char unused_pad2; /* 385 */
struct sparse sp[SPARSES_IN_OLDGNU_HEADER];
/* 386 */
char isextended; /* 482 */
char realsize[12]; /* 483 */
/* 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. */
/* 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'
/* 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 */
POSIX_FORMAT, /* restricted, pure POSIX format */
GNU_FORMAT /* POSIX format with GNU extensions */
};
union block
{
char buffer[BLOCKSIZE];
struct posix_header header;
struct extra_header extra_header;
struct oldgnu_header oldgnu_header;
struct sparse_header sparse_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
2 digits, a space, and a null, except `size', and `mtime', which do not
contain the trailing 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 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 was 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 time
and last inode-change time.
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_header's 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'.
(tar) Attributes
(tar) Formats
(tar) Extensions
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