Reference: pax

pax

pax

[options ] [patterns ]

Solaris only. Portable Archive Exchange program. When members of the POSIX 1003.2 working group could not standardize on either tar or cpio , they invented this program.[1 ] (See also cpio and tar .)

[1] This period in Unix history is known as the "tar wars." :-)

pax operates in four modes, depending on the combinations of -r and -w :

List mode: No -r and no -w . List the contents of a pax archive. Optionally, restrict the output to filenames and/or directories that match a given pattern.
Extract mode: -r only. Extract files from a pax archive. Intermediate directories are created as needed.
Archive mode: -w only. Archive files to a new or existing pax archive. The archive is written to standard output; it may be redirected to an appropriate tape device if needed for backups.
Pass-through mode: -r and -w . Copy a directory tree from one location to another, analogous to cpio -p .

Options

Here are the options available in the four modes:

None:       c d f       n     s     v
-r

:         c d f i k   n o p s   u v
-w

:     a b   d f i       o   s t u v x X
-rw

:          d   i k l n   p s t u v   X

-a

Append files to the archive. This may not work on some tape devices.

-b size

Use size as the blocksize, in bytes, of blocks to be written to the archive.

-c

Complement. Match all file or archive members that do not match the patterns.

-d

For files or archive members that are directories, extract or archive only the directory itself, not the tree it contains.

-f archive

Use archive instead of standard input or standard output.

-i

Interactively rename files. For each file, pax writes a prompt to /dev/tty and reads a one-line response from /dev/tty . The responses are as follows:

Return	Skip the file.
A period	Take the file as is.
new name	Anything else is taken as the new name to use for the file.
EOF	Exit immediately with a nonzero exit status.

-k

Do not overwrite existing files.

-l

Make hard links. When copying a directory tree (-rw ), make hard links between the source and destination hierarchies wherever possible.

-n

Choose the first archive member that matches each pattern. No more than one archive member will match for each pattern.

-o options

Reserved for format-specific options. (Apparently unused in Solaris.)

-p privs

Specify one or more privileges for the extracted file. privs specify permissions or other characteristics to be preserved or ignored.

`a`	Do not preserve file access times.
`e`	Retain the user and group IDs, permissions (mode), and access and modification time.
`m`	Do not preserve the file modification time.
`o`	Retain the user and group ID.
`p`	Keep the permissions (mode).

-r

Read an archive and extract files.

-s replacement

Use replacement to modify file or archive member names. This is a string of the form -s/ old / new / [gp ]. This is similar to the substitution commands in ed , ex , and sed . old is a regular expression, and new may contain & to mean the matched text and \ n for subpatterns. The trailing g indicates the substitution should be applied globally. A trailing p causes pax to print the resulting new filename. Multiple -s options may be supplied. The first one that works is applied. Any delimiter may be used, not just / , but in all cases it is wise to quote the argument to prevent the shell from expanding wildcard characters.

-t

Reset the access time of archived files to what they were before being archived by pax .

-u

Ignore files older than preexisting files or archive members. The behavior varies based on the current mode.

Extract mode: Extract the archive file if it is newer than an existing file with the same name.
Archive mode: If an existing file with the same name as an archive member is newer than the archive member, supersede the archive member.
Pass-through mode: Replace the file in the destination hierarchy with the file in the source hierarchy (or a link to it) if the source hierarchy's file is newer.

-v

In list mode, print a verbose table of contents. Otherwise, print archive member names on standard error.

-w

Write files to standard output in the given archive format.

-x format

Use the given format for the archive. The value of format is either cpio or ustar . The details of both formats are provided in the IEEE 1003.1 (1990) POSIX standard. The two formats are mutually incompatible; attempting to append using one format to an archive using the other is an error.

-X

When traversing directory trees, do not cross into a directory on a different device (the st_dev field in the stat structure, see stat (2); similar to the -mount option of find ).

Examples

Copy the current directory to tape:

pax -x ustar -w -f /dev/rmt/0m .

Copy a home directory to a different directory (presumably on a bigger disk).

# cd /home


# pax -r -w arnold /newhome