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cpio(1)				 User Commands			       cpio(1)

NAME
       cpio - copy file archives in and out

SYNOPSIS
       cpio -i [-bBcdfkmPrsStuvV6,t;] [-C bufsize] [-E file]
	    [-H header] [-I  [-M message]] [-R id] [pattern]...

       cpio -o [-aABcLPvV,t;] [-C bufsize] [-H header]
	    [-O file [-M message]]

       cpio -p [-adlLmPuvV,t;] [-R id] directory

DESCRIPTION
       The  cpio command copies files into and out of a cpio archive. The cpio
       archive may span multiple volumes. The -i, -o, and  -p  options	select
       the  action  to	be performed. The following list describes each of the
       actions. These actions are mutually exclusive.

   Copy In Mode
       cpio -i (copy in) extracts files from  the  standard  input,  which  is
       assumed	to  be	the  product of a previous cpio -o command. Only files
       with names that match one of the patterns are selected. See  sh(1)  and
       OPERANDS for more information about pattern. Extracted files are condi‐
       tionally copied into the current directory tree, based on  the  options
       described below. The permissions of the files will be those of the pre‐
       vious cpio -o command. The owner and group will be the same as the cur‐
       rent  user,  unless  the current user is the super-user. If this is the
       case, owner and group will be the same as those resulting from the pre‐
       vious  cpio  -o	command. Notice that if cpio -i tries to create a file
       that already exists and the existing file is the same  age  or  younger
       (newer),	 cpio  will output a warning message and not replace the file.
       The -u option can be used to  unconditionally  overwrite	 the  existing
       file.

   Copy Out Mode
       cpio  -o	 (copy	out) reads a list of file path names from the standard
       input and copies those files to the standard output, together with path
       name  and  status  information in the form of a cpio archive. Output is
       padded to an 8192-byte boundary by default  or  to  the	user-specified
       block  size  (with  the	-B  or -C options) or to some device-dependent
       block size where necessary (as with the CTC tape).

   Pass Mode
       cpio -p (pass) reads a list of file path names from the standard	 input
       and  conditionally  copies  those  files into the destination directory
       tree, based on the options described below.

       If the underlying file system of the source file supports detection  of
       holes  as  reported  by pathconf(2), the file is a sparse file, and the
       destination file is seekable, then holes in sparse files are  preserved
       in pass mode, otherwise holes are filled with zeros.

       cpio assumes four-byte words.

       If, when writing to a character device (-o) or reading from a character
       device (-i), cpio reaches the end of a medium (such as  the  end	 of  a
       diskette), and the -O and -I options are not used, cpio prints the fol‐
       lowing message:

	 To continue, type device/file name when ready.

       To continue, you must replace the medium and type the character special
       device name (/dev/rdiskette for example) and press RETURN. You may want
       to continue by directing cpio to use a different device.	 For  example,
       if  you	have  two floppy drives you may want to switch between them so
       cpio can proceed while you are changing the floppies. Press  RETURN  to
       cause the cpio process to exit.

OPTIONS
       The following options are supported:

       -i    (copy in) Reads an archive from the standard input and condition‐
	     ally extracts the files contained in it and places them into  the
	     current directory tree.

       -o    (copy  out)  Reads	 a  list  of file path names from the standard
	     input and copies those files to the standard output in  the  form
	     of a cpio archive.

       -p    (pass)  Reads  a  list of file path names from the standard input
	     and conditionally copies those files into the destination	direc‐
	     tory tree.

       The following options can be appended in any sequence to the -i, -o, or
       -p options:

       -a	     Resets access times of input files after they  have  been
		     copied,  making cpio's access invisible. Access times are
		     not reset for linked files when cpio -pla is specified.

       -A	     Appends files to an archive. The -A option	 requires  the
		     -O	 option.  Valid	 only with archives that are files, or
		     that are on floppy diskettes or hard disk partitions. The
		     effect  on	 files that are linked in the existing portion
		     of the archive is unpredictable.

       -b	     Reverses the order of the bytes  within  each  word.  Use
		     only with the -i option.

       -B	     Blocks input/output 5120 bytes to the record. The default
		     buffer size is 8192 bytes when this and  the  -C  options
		     are not used. -B does not apply to the -p (pass) option.

       -c	     Reads  or	writes	header	information in ASCII character
		     form for portability. There are no UID  or	 GID  restric‐
		     tions associated with this header format. Use this option
		     between SVR4-based machines, or the -H odc option between
		     unknown  machines.	 The  -c  option  implies  the	use of
		     expanded device numbers,  which  are  only	 supported  on
		     SVR4-based systems. When transferring files between SunOS
		     4 or Interactive UNIX and the Solaris 2.6 Operating envi‐
		     ronment or compatible versions, use -H odc.

       -C bufsize    Blocks  input/output  bufsize  bytes to the record, where
		     bufsize is replaced by a positive	integer.  The  default
		     buffer  size  is  8192 bytes when this and -B options are
		     not used. -C does not apply to the -p (pass) option.

       -d	     Creates directories as needed.

       -E file	     Specifies an input file (file) that contains  a  list  of
		     filenames	to be extracted from the archive (one filename
		     per line).

       -f	     Copies in all files except those in patterns.  See	 OPER‐
		     ANDS for a description of pattern.

       -H header     Reads  or	writes	header	information  in header format.
		     Always use this option or the -c option when  the	origin
		     and  the  destination  machines are different types. This
		     option is mutually exclusive with options -c and -6.

		     Valid values for header are:

		     bar	      bar head and format. Used only with  the
				      -i option ( read only).

		     crc | CRC	      ASCII  header  with expanded device num‐
				      bers and an additional  per-file	check‐
				      sum.  There  are	no UID or GID restric‐
				      tions associated with this  header  for‐
				      mat.

		     odc	      ASCII  header with small device numbers.
				      This is the IEEE/P1003 Data  Interchange
				      Standard	cpio header and format. It has
				      the widest range of portability  of  any
				      of  the  header formats. It is the offi‐
				      cial  format  for	  transferring	 files
				      between  POSIX-conforming	 systems  (see
				      standards(5)). Use this format to commu‐
				      nicate  with  SunOS  4  and  Interactive
				      UNIX. This header format allows UIDs and
				      GIDs  up	to  262143 to be stored in the
				      header.

		     tar | TAR	      tar header and format. This is an	 older
				      tar  header  format that allows UIDs and
				      GIDs up to 2097151 to be stored  in  the
				      header.  It  is provided for the reading
				      of legacy archives  only,	 that  is,  in
				      conjunction with option -i.

				      Specifying   this	 archive  format  with
				      option -o has the same effect as	speci‐
				      fying the "ustar" format: the output ar‐
				      chive is in ustar format,	 and  must  be
				      read using -H ustar.

		     ustar | USTAR    IEEE/P1003 Data Interchange Standard tar
				      header and format.  This	header	format
				      allows UIDs and GIDs up to 2097151 to be
				      stored in the header.

		     Files with UIDs and GIDs greater than  the	 limit	stated
		     above  will be archived with the UID and GID of 60001. To
		     transfer a large file (8 Gb — 1 byte), the header	format
		     can be tar|TAR, ustar|USTAR, or odc only.

       -I file	     Reads  the	 contents of file as an input archive, instead
		     of the standard input. If file  is	 a  character  special
		     device,  and the current medium has been completely read,
		     replace the medium and press RETURN to  continue  to  the
		     next medium. This option is used only with the -i option.

       -k	     Attempts  to  skip	 corrupted file headers and I/O errors
		     that may be encountered. If you want to copy files from a
		     medium  that is corrupted or out of sequence, this option
		     lets you read only those files  with  good	 headers.  For
		     cpio  archives  that  contain  other cpio archives, if an
		     error is encountered,  cpio  may  terminate  prematurely.
		     cpio will find the next good header, which may be one for
		     a smaller archive, and terminate  when  the  smaller  ar‐
		     chive's  trailer  is  encountered.	 Use  only with the -i
		     option.

       -l	     In pass mode, makes hard links  between  the  source  and
		     destination  whenever  possible. If the -L option is also
		     specified, the hard link will be to the file referred  to
		     by the symbolic link. Otherwise, the hard link will be to
		     the symbolic link itself. Use only with the -p option.

       -L	     Follows symbolic links. If a symbolic link to a directory
		     is encountered, archives the directory referred to by the
		     link, using the name of the link. Otherwise, archives the
		     file referred to by the link, using the name of the link.

       -m	     Retains  previous	file modification time. This option is
		     ineffective on directories that are being copied.

       -M message    Defines a message to use when switching media.  When  you
		     use  the -O or -I options and specify a character special
		     device, you can use this option  to  define  the  message
		     that is printed when you reach the end of the medium. One
		     %d can be placed in message to print the sequence	number
		     of the next medium needed to continue.

       -O file	     Directs  the output of cpio to file, instead of the stan‐
		     dard output. If file is a character  special  device  and
		     the current medium is full, replace the medium and type a
		     carriage return to continue to the next medium. Use  only
		     with the -o option.

       -P	     Preserves	ACLs. If the option is used for output, exist‐
		     ing ACLs are written along with other attributes,	except
		     for extended attributes, to the standard output. ACLs are
		     created as special files with a special file type. If the
		     option  is	 used  for  input, existing ACLs are extracted
		     along with other  attributes  from	 standard  input.  The
		     option  recognizes	 the  special  file  type. Notice that
		     errors  will  occur  if  a	 cpio  archive	with  ACLs  is
		     extracted	by  previous  versions	of  cpio.  This option
		     should not be used with the -c option, as ACL support may
		     not be present on all systems, and hence is not portable.
		     Use ASCII headers for portability.

       -r	     Interactively renames files. If the user types a carriage
		     return  alone,  the  file is skipped. If the user types a
		     ``.'', the original pathname will be retained. Not avail‐
		     able with cpio -p.

       -R id	     Reassigns	ownership  and group information for each file
		     to	 user  ID.  (ID	 must  be  a  valid  login   ID	  from
		     /etc/passwd.)  This  option  is valid only for the super-
		     user.

       -s	     Swaps bytes within each half word.

       -S	     Swaps halfwords within each word.

       -t	     Prints a table of contents of the input. If any  file  in
		     the  table of contents has extended attributes, these are
		     also listed. No files are created. -t and -V are mutually
		     exclusive.

       -u	     Copies  unconditionally. Normally, an older file will not
		     replace a newer file with	the  same  name,  although  an
		     older directory will update a newer directory.

       -v	     Verbose.  Prints  a  list	of file and extended attribute
		     names. When used with the -t option, the  table  of  con‐
		     tents  looks  like	 the  output  of an ls -l command (see
		     ls(1)).

       -V	     Special verbose. Prints a dot for each file read or writ‐
		     ten. Useful to assure the user that cpio is working with‐
		     out printing out all file names.

       -6	     Processes a UNIX  System  Sixth  Edition  archive	format
		     file.  Use	 only with the -i option. This option is mutu‐
		     ally exclusive with -c and -H.

       -@	     Includes extended attributes in archive. By default, cpio
		     does  not	place extended attributes in the archive. With
		     this flag, cpio will look for extended attributes on  the
		     files  to be placed in the archive and add them, as regu‐
		     lar files, to the archive. The extended  attribute	 files
		     go	 in  the  archive  as  special files with special file
		     types. When the -@	 flag  is  used	 with  -i  or  -p,  it
		     instructs	cpio  to restore extended attribute data along
		     with the normal file data. Extended attribute  files  can
		     only  be  extracted  from	an archive as part of a normal
		     file extract. Attempts to	explicitly  extract  attribute
		     records are ignored.

OPERANDS
       The following operands are supported:

       directory    A  path  name  of  an existing directory to be used as the
		    target of cpio -p.

       pattern	    Expressions making use of a pattern-matching notation sim‐
		    ilar  to  that  used by the shell (see sh(1)) for filename
		    pattern matching, and similar to regular expressions.  The
		    following metacharacters are defined:

		    *	     Matches any string, including the empty string.

		    ?	     Matches any single character.

		    [...]    Matches  any  one	of  the enclosed characters. A
			     pair of characters separated by `−'  matches  any
			     symbol  between  the pair (inclusive), as defined
			     by the system default collating sequence. If  the
			     first  character  following  the opening `[' is a
			     `!', the results are unspecified.

		    !	     The ! (exclamation point) means not. For example,
			     the  !abc*	 pattern  would exclude all files that
			     begin with abc.

		    In pattern, metacharacters ?, *, and [...] match the slash
		    (/)	 character,  and backslash (\) is an escape character.
		    Multiple cases of pattern can be specified and if no  pat‐
		    tern  is specified, the default for pattern is * (that is,
		    select all files).

		    Each pattern must be enclosed in double quotes. Otherwise,
		    the name of a file in the current directory might be used.

USAGE
       See  largefile(5)  for  the  description	 of  the behavior of cpio when
       encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).

EXAMPLES
       The following examples show three uses of cpio.

       Example 1 Using standard input

	 example% ls | cpio -oc > ../newfile

       When standard input is directed through a pipe to cpio -o,  as  in  the
       example	above,	it  groups  the files so they can be directed (>) to a
       single file (../newfile). The -c option insures that the file  will  be
       portable	 to other machines (as would the -H option). Instead of ls(1),
       you could use find(1), echo(1), cat(1), and so on, to pipe  a  list  of
       names  to  cpio.	 You  could direct the output to a device instead of a
       file.

       Example 2 Extracting files into directories

	 example% cat newfile | cpio -icd "memo/a1" "memo/b*"

       In this example, cpio -i uses the output	 file  of  cpio	 -o  (directed
       through	a pipe with cat), extracts those files that match the patterns
       (memo/a1, memo/b*), creates directories below the current directory  as
       needed  (-d  option),  and places the files in the appropriate directo‐
       ries. The -c option is used if the input file was created with a porta‐
       ble  header. If no patterns were given, all files from newfile would be
       placed in the directory.

       Example 3 Copying or linking files to another directory

	 example% find . -depth -print | cpio -pdlmv newdir

       In this example, cpio -p takes the file names piped to it and copies or
       links  (-l  option)  those  files  to another directory, newdir. The -d
       option says to create directories as needed.  The  -m  option  says  to
       retain the modification time. (It is important to use the -depth option
       of find(1) to generate path names for cpio.  This  eliminates  problems
       that  cpio  could  have trying to create files under read-only directo‐
       ries.) The destination directory, newdir, must exist.

       Notice that when you use cpio in conjunction with find, if you use  the
       -L option with cpio, you must use the -follow option with find and vice
       versa. Otherwise, there will be undesirable results.

       For multi-reel archives, dismount the old volume, mount	the  new  one,
       and  continue  to  the  next tape by typing the name of the next device
       (probably the same as the first reel). To stop, type a RETURN and  cpio
       will end.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       See  environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
       that affect the execution of cpio: LC_COLLATE,  LC_CTYPE,  LC_MESSAGES,
       LC_TIME, TZ, and NLSPATH.

       TMPDIR	 cpio  creates its temporary file in /var/tmp by default. Oth‐
		 erwise, it uses the directory specified by TMPDIR.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values are returned:

       0     Successful completion.

       >0    An error occurred.

ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
       │      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     │	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │Availability		     │SUNWcsu			   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │CSI			     │Enabled			   │
       ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │Interface Stability	     │Stable			   │
       └─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

SEE ALSO
       ar(1), cat(1), echo(1), find(1), ls(1),	pax(1),	 setfacl(1),  sh(  1),
       tar(1),	 vold(1M),   archives.h(3HEAD),	  attributes(5),   environ(5),
       fsattr(5), largefile(5), standards(5)

NOTES
       The maximum path name length allowed in a cpio archive is determined by
       the  header  type  involved. The following table shows the proper value
       for each supported archive header type.

	  Header type	    Command line options   Maximum path name length
       BINARY		    "-o"		   256
       POSIX		    "-oH odc"		   256
       ASCII		    "-oc"		   1023
       CRC		    "-oH crc"		   1023
       USTAR		    "-oH ustar"		   255

       When the command line options "-o -H tar" are  specified,  the  archive
       created	is  of type USTAR. This means that it is an error to read this
       same archive using the command line options "-i -H  tar".  The  archive
       should  be  read	 using	the  command  line  options "-i -H ustar". The
       options "-i -H tar" refer to an older tar archive format.

       An error message is output for files whose UID or GID are too large  to
       fit  in the selected header format. Use -H crc or -c to create archives
       that allow all UID or GID values.

       Only the super-user can copy special files.

       Blocks are reported in 512-byte quantities.

       If a file has 000 permissions, contains more than 0 characters of data,
       and the user is not root, the file will not be saved or restored.

       The  inode  number stored in the header (/usr/include/archives.h) is an
       unsigned short, which is 2 bytes. This limits the range of  inode  num‐
       bers  from  0  to  65535. Files which are hard linked must fall in this
       inode range. This could be a problem when moving cpio archives  between
       different vendors' machines.

       When  the  Volume  Management  daemon  is  running,  accesses to floppy
       devices	through	 the   conventional   device   names   (for   example,
       /dev/rdiskette) may not succeed. See vold(1M) for further details.

       You  must  use the same blocking factor when you retrieve or copy files
       from the tape to the hard disk as you did when you  copied  files  from
       the  hard  disk	to  the tape. Therefore, you must specify the -B or -C
       option.

       During -p and -o processing, cpio buffers the file  list	 presented  on
       stdin in a temporary file.

       The  new	 pax(1)	 format, with a command that supports it (for example,
       pax , tar, or cpio), should be used for large files. The	 cpio  command
       is  no  longer  part of the current POSIX standard and is deprecated in
       favor of pax.

SunOS 5.10			  19 Apr 2010			       cpio(1)
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