Pax

pax - read and write file archives and copy directory hierarchies. A POSIX File System Archiver. It supports the two most common forms of standard Unix archive (backup) files: cpio and tar.

Examples

• Copy the contents of the current directory to the device /dev/rst0:

pax -w -f /dev/rst0 .

• Give the verbose table of contents for an archive stored in filename:

pax -v -f filename

• This sequence of commands will copy the entire olddir directory hierarchy to newdir:

mkdir newdir cd olddir pax -rw . newdir

• Read the archive a.pax with all files rooted in /usr into the archive extracted relative to the current directory:

pax -r -s ',^//*usr//*,,' -f a.pax

• Can be used to interactively select the files to copy from the current directory to dest_dir:

pax -rw -i . dest_dir

• Extract all files from the archive a.pax which are owned by root with group bin and preserve all file permissions:

pax -r -pe -U root -G bin -f a.pax

• Update (and list) only those files in the destination directory /backup which are older (less recent inode change or file modification times) than files with the same name found in the source file tree home:

pax -r -w -v -Y -Z home /backup

See also

• mt
• tar
• cpio

External links

• ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/kukuk/pax/