Schily's USER COMMANDS SCPIO(1L)
NAME
scpio - copy file archives in and out (LEGACY)
SYNOPSIS
scpio [ other options ] -o[aBcv]
scpio [ other options ] -i[Bcdmruvf] [ pattern ... ]
scpio [ other options ] -it[Bcvf] [ pattern ... ]
scpio [ other options ] -p[adlmuv] directory
DESCRIPTION
The scpio utility, depending on the options used:
+ copies files to an archive file
+ extracts files from an archive file
+ lists files from an archive file
+ copies files from one directory tree to another.
OPTIONS
The scpio utility supports the XBD specification Utility
Syntax Guidelines. The cpio standard does not allow the
option modifiers to be presented as separate arguments from
the option letters. The scpio implementation allows option
modifiers to be presented as separate arguments from the
option letters. When writing portable shell scripts do never
make use of this feature.
The following options are supported:
-o (Copy Out.) Read the standard input to obtain a list of
pathnames and copy those files onto the standard output
together with pathname and status information. Output
is padded to a 512-byte boundary.
-i (Copy In.) Extract files from the standard input, which
is assumed to be the product of a previous scpio -o.
Only files with names that match patterns are selected.
The extracted files are conditionally created and
copied into the current directory tree based upon the
options described below. The permissions of the files
will be those of the previous scpio -o. The owner and
group of the files will be that of the current user
unless the user has appropriate privileges, which
causes scpio to retain the owner and group of the files
of the previous scpio -o. If the archive being read
does not match the modifier specified, scpio may con-
sider this to be an error and exit or may recognise the
archive and continue processing. Only a user with
appropriate privileges can extract block special or
character special files from an archive.
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-it (List.) List files from the archive. This is a sub mode
of the copy in mode, no files are created in list mode.
-p (Pass.) Read the standard input to obtain a list of
pathnames of files that are conditionally created and
copied into the destination directory tree based upon
the option modifiers described below.
The following option modifiers can be appended in any
sequence to the -o, -i or -p options:
a Reset access times of input files after they have been
copied. (When option l (see below) is also specified,
the access times of the linked files are not reset.)
B Block input/output 5120 bytes to the record (does not
apply to the -p option; meaningful only with data
directed to or from character special files).
d Create directories as needed.
c Write or read header information in character form for
portability. Note that the Open Group standard does
not specify the archive format that should be used with
the c option. For this reason it is questionable
wether the c option increases portability in general.
The archive format used by scpio with the c option is
the format from the -H asc option. It gives best cpio
compatibility when transferring files to SVR4-based
systems (except that the file size is limited to
2 gigabytes). When transferring files in cpio archives
to unknown operating systems, it is unwise to use the
c option.
r Interactively rename files. For each archive member
matching pattern operand, a prompt will be written to
the file /dev/tty. The prompt will contain the name of
the archive member, but the format is otherwise
unspecified. A line will then be read from /dev/tty.
If this line is blank, the archive member will be
skipped. If this line consists of a single period, the
archive member will be processed with no modification
to its name. Otherwise, its name will be replaced with
the contents of the line. The scpio utility will
immediately exit with a non-zero exit status if end-
of-file is encountered when reading a response, or if
/dev/tty cannot be opened for reading and writing.
t Write a table of contents of the input. No files are
created.
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u Copy unconditionally (normally, an older file will not
replace a newer file with the same name).
v Verbose: print the names of the affected files. With
the t option, provides a detailed listing.
l Whenever possible, link files rather than copying them.
Usable only with the -p option. The l option modifier
is not yet supported by scpio.
m Retain previous file modification time. This option is
ineffective on directories that are being copied.
f Copy in all files except those in patterns.
The following other options are implemented as SVr4 compli-
ant extension to the Open Group standard:
-6 Extract UNIX System Sixth Edition cpio archives. This
option is not valid in archive create mode, it is mutu-
ally exclusive with -c, -H, and artype=. As is is
unclear how UNIX System Sixth Edition cpio archives
look like, this option is currently unsupported.
-@ Include extended file attributes in the archive. This
option is currently unsupported.
-A Append files to an existing archive. The -A option
only works together with the -O option. See star -r
for more information.
-b Reverses the order of the bytes within each word. It
is unclear what a word is supposed to be. This option
is unsupported but not needed as scpio includes
automatic byte order recognition.
-C # Sets (input/output) archive block size to # bytes.
-E name
Read filenames for store/create/list command from name.
The file name must contain a list of filenames, each on
a separate line.
-H header
Set the archive type to header. See star(1) for more
information.
-I nm
Use nm as archive file name instead of stdin.
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-k Try to skip corrupt archive headers.
-L Follow symbolic links as if they were files.
-M message
Define a message that is uses when switching media.
This option is currently unsupported.
-O nm
Use nm as archive file name instead of stdout.
-P Handle Access Control List (ACL) information in create
and extract mode. See star -acl for more information.
-R nm
Reassign ownership and group for all files based on nm.
This option is currently unsupported.
-s Reverses the order of the bytes within each word. It
is unclear what a word is supposed to be. This option
is unsupported but not needed as scpio includes
automatic byte order recognition.
-S Reverses the order of the halfwords within each word.
It is unclear what a word is supposed to be. This
option is unsupported but not needed as scpio includes
automatic byte order recognition.
-V Special verbose. Print a dot for each file that is read
or written. This option is currently unsupported.
The following other options are implemented as star exten-
sion to the Open Group standard:
-help
Prints a summary of the most important options for
scpio(1) and exits.
-xhelp
Prints a summary of the less important options for
scpio(1) and exits.
-version
Prints the scpio version number string and exists.
-/ Don't strip leading slashes from file names when
extracting an archive. See star(1) for more informa-
tion.
.. Don't skip files that contain /../ in the name. See
star(1) for more information.
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-7z run the input or output through a p7zip pipe - see
option -z below.
Note that the p7zip program currently does not operate
on a pipe but on a /tmp file copy and thus limits the
maximum archive size.
-acl Handle Access Control List (ACL) information in create
and extract mode. See star(1) for more information.
artype=header
Set the archive type to header. See star(1) for more
information.
-lzo Run the input or output through a lzop pipe - see
option -z below.
-bz Run the input or output through a bzip2 pipe - see
option -z below. As the -bz the -z options are non
standard, it makes sense to omit -bz options the inside
shell scripts. If you are going to extract a
compressed archive that is located inside a plain file,
scpio will auto detect compression and choose the right
decompression option to extract.
bs=# Set block size to #. You may use the same method as in
dd(1) and sdd(1). See star(1) for more information.
-fifostats
Print fifo statistics at the end of a scpio run when
the fifo has been in effect.
fs=# Set fifo size to #. See star(1) for more information.
-no-fifo
Do not use a fifo to optimize data flow from/to tape.
See star(1) for more information.
-no-fsync
Do not call fsync(2) for each file that has been
extracted from the archive. See star(1) for more
information.
-do-fsync
Call fsync(2) for each file that has been extracted
from the archive. See star(1) for more information.
-no-statistics
Do not print statistic messages at the end of a scpio
run.
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-secure-links
Do not extract hard links or symbolic links if the link
name (the target of the link) starts with a slash (/)
or if /../ is contained in the link name. See star(1)
for more information.
-numeric
Use the numeric user/group fields in the listing rather
than the default. See star(1) for more information.
-time
Print timing info. See star(1) for more information.
-xfflags
Store and extract extended file flags as found on BSD
and Linux systems. See star -acl for more information.
-z Run the input or output through a gzip pipe - see
option -bz above. As the -bz the -z options are non
standard, it makes sense to omit -bz options the inside
shell scripts. If you are going to extract a
compressed archive that is located inside a plain file,
scpio will auto detect compression and choose the right
decompression option to extract.
-zstd
run the input or output through a zstd pipe - see
option -z above.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
directory
A pathname of an existing directory to be used as the
target of scpio -p.
pattern
Expressions making use of a pattern-matching notation
similar to that used by the shell for filename pattern
matching, and similar to regular expressions. The fol-
lowing 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
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character following the opening `[' is a `!', the
results are unspecified.
In pattern, the special characters "?", "*" and "["
also match the "/" character. Multiple cases of pattern
can be specified and if no pattern is specified, the
default for pattern is "*" (that is, select all files).
Note that scpio does not use fnmatch(3) based pattern
matching as documented above, it rather uses the pat-
tern matcher documented in match(1).
STDIN
When the -o or -p options are used, the standard input is a
text file containing a list of pathnames, one per line, to
be copied.
When the -i option is used, the standard input is an archive
file formatted in any way that is understood by the archive
handling engine (see -H help option for a complete list).
INPUT FILES
The files identified by the pathnames in the standard input
are of any type.
When the -r option is used, the file /dev/tty is used to
write prompts and read responses.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
When the -o option is used, the standard output is an
archive file formatted as specified by pax with the -x cpio
option. For better compatibility with SVR4-based systems
that do not implement the cpio format correctly, scpio by
default limits the length of file names to 256 bytes. Use
scpio -H cpio to explicitly switch to the full POSIX
1003.1-1988 cpio archive format.
Otherwise, the standard output contains commentary in an
unspecified format concerning the progress of the execution.
STDERR
When the -o option is not used, the standard error contains
commentary in an unspecified format concerning the progress
of the execution. Otherwise, the standard error is used only
for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
Output files are created, as specified by the archive, when
the -i or -p options are used.
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EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
If a file or directory cannot be created or overwritten,
scpio continues with the next file in the archive or file to
be added to the archive.
APPLICATION USAGE
Archives created by scpio are portable between XSI-
conformant systems provided the same procedures are used.
The shell metacharacter notation is not fully compatible
with that used by the shell and the pax utility. Not all
systems support the use of the negation character [! ...] in
cpio patterns. Portable applications must avoid the use of
this notation.
For portable communication of data between XSI-conformant
systems, it is recommended that only characters defined in
the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard International Reference Ver-
sion (equivalent to ASCII) 7-bit range of characters be used
and that only characters defined in the Portable Filename
Character Set be used for naming files. This recommendation
is given because XSI-conformant systems support diverse
codesets and run in various geographical areas and there is
no single, well-established codeset that incorporates all of
the characters of the languages of the various geographical
areas.
The cpio archive format only supports file sizes up to
8 gigabytes.
Applications should migrate to the pax archive format which
is the POSIX 1003.1-2001 standard archive format and based
on an extended tar format.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
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EXAMPLES
1. Copy the contents of a directory onto an archive:
ls | scpio -o >../cpio.out
2. Duplicate a directory hierarchy:
cd olddir
find . -depth -print | scpio
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables may affect the execution
of scpio:
TZ Determine the timezone used with date and time strings.
SEE ALSO
ar(1), find(1), sfind(1), ls(1), match(1), pax(1), spax(1),
tar(1), star(1).
DIAGNOSTICS
NOTES
The default block size for cpio is 512 bytes, this slows
down write speed. Use -B, -C, or bs= to set a different
block size.
Scpio -iu is equivalent to star -xU -install -force-remove
-remove-recursive and for this reason may remove nonempty
directory trees in extrace mode without printing a warning.
The Open Group, have given us permission to reprint portions
of their documentation. In the following statement, the
phrase ``this text'' refers to portions of the system docu-
mentation.
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in elec-
tronic form in the scpio manual, from The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 5, Copyright (C) 1997 by The Open
Group. In the event of any discrepancy between these ver-
sions and the original specification, the original The Open
Group Standard is the referee document. The original Stan-
dard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/single_unix_specification_v2.
BUGS
AUTHOR
Joerg Schilling
D-13353 Berlin
Germany
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Mail bugs and suggestions to:
joerg@schily.net
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