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-rw-r--r--doc/tarlz.info140
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diff --git a/doc/tarlz.info b/doc/tarlz.info
index d71c0a3..fa6682d 100644
--- a/doc/tarlz.info
+++ b/doc/tarlz.info
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ File: tarlz.info, Node: Top, Next: Introduction, Up: (dir)
Tarlz Manual
************
-This manual is for Tarlz (version 0.23, 23 September 2022).
+This manual is for Tarlz (version 0.24, 20 September 2023).
* Menu:
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ This manual is for Tarlz (version 0.23, 23 September 2022).
* Concept index:: Index of concepts
- Copyright (C) 2013-2022 Antonio Diaz Diaz.
+ Copyright (C) 2013-2023 Antonio Diaz Diaz.
This manual is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to copy,
distribute, and modify it.
@@ -58,9 +58,9 @@ plzip may even double the amount of files lost for each lzip member damaged
because it does not keep the members aligned.
Tarlz can create tar archives with five levels of compression
-granularity: per file (--no-solid), per block (--bsolid, default), per
-directory (--dsolid), appendable solid (--asolid), and solid (--solid). It
-can also create uncompressed tar archives.
+granularity: per file ('--no-solid'), per block ('--bsolid', default), per
+directory ('--dsolid'), appendable solid ('--asolid'), and solid
+('--solid'). It can also create uncompressed tar archives.
Of course, compressing each file (or each directory) individually can't
achieve a compression ratio as high as compressing solidly the whole tar
@@ -87,9 +87,9 @@ archive, but it has the following advantages:
Tarlz protects the extended records with a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
in a way compatible with standard tar tools. *Note crc32::.
- Tarlz does not understand other tar formats like 'gnu', 'oldgnu', 'star'
-or 'v7'. The command 'tarlz -tf archive.tar.lz > /dev/null' can be used to
-verify that the format of the archive is compatible with tarlz.
+ Tarlz does not understand other tar formats like 'gnu', 'oldgnu',
+'star', or 'v7'. The command 'tarlz -t -f archive.tar.lz > /dev/null' can
+be used to check that the format of the archive is compatible with tarlz.

File: tarlz.info, Node: Invoking tarlz, Next: Portable character set, Prev: Introduction, Up: Top
@@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
'-A'
'--concatenate'
Append one or more archives to the end of an archive. If no archive is
- specified with the option '-f', the input archives are concatenated to
+ specified with the option '-f', concatenate the input archives to
standard output. All the archives involved must be regular (seekable)
files, and must be either all compressed or all uncompressed.
Compressed and uncompressed archives can't be mixed. Compressed
@@ -163,7 +163,7 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
'-d'
'--diff'
Compare and report differences between archive and file system. For
- each tar member in the archive, verify that the corresponding file in
+ each tar member in the archive, check that the corresponding file in
the file system exists and is of the same type (regular file,
directory, etc). Report on standard output the differences found in
type, mode (permissions), owner and group IDs, modification time, file
@@ -224,22 +224,25 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
directory without extracting the files under it, use
'tarlz -xf foo --exclude='dir/*' dir'. Tarlz removes files and empty
directories unconditionally before extracting over them. Other than
- that, it will not make any special effort to extract a file over an
+ that, it does not make any special effort to extract a file over an
incompatible type of file. For example, extracting a file over a
- non-empty directory will usually fail.
+ non-empty directory usually fails.
'-z'
'--compress'
Compress existing POSIX tar archives aligning the lzip members to the
- tar members with choice of granularity (--bsolid by default, --dsolid
- works like --asolid). The input archives are kept unchanged. Existing
- compressed archives are not overwritten. A hyphen '-' used as the name
- of an input archive reads from standard input and writes to standard
- output (unless the option '--output' is used). Tarlz can be used as
- compressor for GNU tar using a command like
- 'tar -c -Hustar foo | tarlz -z -o foo.tar.lz'. Note that tarlz only
- works reliably on archives without global headers, or with global
- headers whose content can be ignored.
+ tar members with choice of granularity ('--bsolid' by default,
+ '--dsolid' works like '--asolid'). Exit with error status 2 if any
+ input archive is an empty file. The input archives are kept unchanged.
+ Existing compressed archives are not overwritten. A hyphen '-' used as
+ the name of an input archive reads from standard input and writes to
+ standard output (unless the option '--output' is used). Tarlz can be
+ used as compressor for GNU tar by using a command like
+ 'tar -c -Hustar foo | tarlz -z -o foo.tar.lz'. Tarlz can be used as
+ compressor for zupdate (zutils) by using a command like
+ 'zupdate --lz="tarlz -z" foo.tar.gz'. Note that tarlz only works
+ reliably on archives without global headers, or with global headers
+ whose content can be ignored.
The compression is reversible, including any garbage present after the
end-of-archive blocks. Tarlz stops parsing after the first
@@ -277,18 +280,18 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
'-C DIR'
'--directory=DIR'
- Change to directory DIR. When creating or appending, the position of
- each '-C' option in the command line is significant; it will change the
- current working directory for the following FILES until a new '-C'
- option appears in the command line. When extracting or comparing, all
- the '-C' options are executed in sequence before reading the archive.
- Listing ignores any '-C' options specified. DIR is relative to the
- then current working directory, perhaps changed by a previous '-C'
+ Change to directory DIR. When creating, appending, comparing, or
+ extracting, the position of each '-C' option in the command line is
+ significant; it changes the current working directory for the following
+ FILES until a new '-C' option appears in the command line. '--list'
+ and '--delete' ignore any '-C' options specified. DIR is relative to
+ the then current working directory, perhaps changed by a previous '-C'
option.
Note that a process can only have one current working directory (CWD).
- Therefore multi-threading can't be used to create an archive if a '-C'
- option appears after a relative file name in the command line.
+ Therefore multi-threading can't be used to create or decode an archive
+ if a '-C' option appears after a (relative) file name in the command
+ line. (All file names are made relative when decoding).
'-f ARCHIVE'
'--file=ARCHIVE'
@@ -308,8 +311,7 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
support". A value of 0 disables threads entirely. If this option is
not used, tarlz tries to detect the number of processors in the system
and use it as default value. 'tarlz --help' shows the system's default
- value. See the note about multi-threaded archive creation in the
- option '-C' above.
+ value. See the note about multi-threading in the option '-C' above.
Note that the number of usable threads is limited during compression to
ceil( uncompressed_size / data_size ) (*note Minimum archive sizes::),
@@ -360,7 +362,9 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
With '--create', don't compress the tar archive created. Create an
uncompressed tar archive instead. With '--append', don't compress the
new members appended to the tar archive. Compressed members can't be
- appended to an uncompressed archive, nor vice versa.
+ appended to an uncompressed archive, nor vice versa. '--uncompressed'
+ can be omitted if it can be deduced from the archive name. (An
+ uncompressed archive name lacks a '.lz' or '.tlz' extension).
'--asolid'
When creating or appending to a compressed archive, use appendable
@@ -438,13 +442,13 @@ to '-1 --solid'.
happens while extracting a file, keep the partial data extracted. Use
this option to recover as much data as possible from each damaged
member. It is recommended to run tarlz in single-threaded mode
- (--threads=0) when using this option.
+ ('--threads=0') when using this option.
'--missing-crc'
Exit with error status 2 if the CRC of the extended records is
missing. When this option is used, tarlz detects any corruption in the
extended records (only limited by CRC collisions). But note that a
- corrupt 'GNU.crc32' keyword, for example 'GNU.crc33', is reported as a
+ corrupt 'GNU.crc32' keyword, for example 'GNU.crc30', is reported as a
missing CRC instead of as a corrupt record. This misleading
'Missing CRC' message is the consequence of a flaw in the POSIX pax
format; i.e., the lack of a mandatory check sequence of the extended
@@ -588,6 +592,10 @@ header block are zeroed on archive creation to prevent trouble if the
archive is read by an ustar tool, and are ignored by tarlz on archive
extraction. *Note flawed-compat::.
+ Tarlz limits the size of the pax extended header data so that the whole
+header set (extended header + extended data + ustar header) can be read and
+decoded in a buffer of size INT_MAX.
+
The pax extended header data consists of one or more records, each of
them constructed as follows:
'"%d %s=%s\n", <length>, <keyword>, <value>'
@@ -618,11 +626,11 @@ space, equal-sign, and newline.
previously archived. This record overrides the field 'linkname' in the
following ustar header block. The following ustar header block
determines the type of link created. If typeflag of the following
- header block is 1, it will be a hard link. If typeflag is 2, it will
- be a symbolic link and the linkpath value will be used as the contents
- of the symbolic link. The linkpath record is created only for links
- with a link name that does not fit in the space provided by the ustar
- header.
+ header block is 1, a hard link is created. If typeflag is 2, a
+ symbolic link is created and the linkpath value is used as the
+ contents of the symbolic link. The linkpath record is created only for
+ links with a link name that does not fit in the space provided by the
+ ustar header.
'mtime'
The signed decimal representation of the modification time of the
@@ -657,7 +665,7 @@ space, equal-sign, and newline.
CRC32-C (Castagnoli) of the extended header data excluding the 8 bytes
representing the CRC <value> itself. The <value> is represented as 8
hexadecimal digits in big endian order, '22 GNU.crc32=00000000\n'. The
- keyword of the CRC record is protected by the CRC to guarante that
+ keyword of the CRC record is protected by the CRC to guarantee that
corruption is always detected when using '--missing-crc' (except in
case of CRC collision). A CRC was chosen because a checksum is too
weak for a potentially large list of variable sized records. A
@@ -843,11 +851,11 @@ to the POSIX-2:1993 standard, POSIX.1-2008 recommends selecting extended
header field values that allow such tar to create a regular file containing
the extended header records as data. This approach is broken because if the
extended header is needed because of a long file name, the fields 'name'
-and 'prefix' will be unable to contain the full file name. (Some tar
+and 'prefix' are unable to contain the full file name. (Some tar
implementations store the truncated name in the field 'name' alone,
truncating the name to only 100 bytes instead of 256). Therefore the files
corresponding to both the extended header and the overridden ustar header
-will be extracted using truncated file names, perhaps overwriting existing
+are extracted using truncated file names, perhaps overwriting existing
files or directories. It may be a security risk to extract a file with a
truncated file name.
@@ -1098,11 +1106,11 @@ multimember compressed archive.
For this to work as expected (and roughly multiply the compression speed
by the number of available processors), the uncompressed archive must be at
least as large as the number of worker threads times the block size (*note
---data-size::). Else some processors will not get any data to compress, and
-compression will be proportionally slower. The maximum speed increase
-achievable on a given archive is limited by the ratio
-(uncompressed_size / data_size). For example, a tarball the size of gcc or
-linux will scale up to 10 or 14 processors at level -9.
+--data-size::). Else some processors do not get any data to compress, and
+compression is proportionally slower. The maximum speed increase achievable
+on a given archive is limited by the ratio (uncompressed_size / data_size).
+For example, a tarball the size of gcc or linux scales up to 10 or 14
+processors at level -9.
The following table shows the minimum uncompressed archive size needed
for full use of N processors at a given compression level, using the default
@@ -1245,24 +1253,24 @@ Concept index
Tag Table:
Node: Top216
Node: Introduction1210
-Node: Invoking tarlz4029
-Ref: --data-size12880
-Ref: --bsolid17192
-Node: Portable character set22788
-Node: File format23431
-Ref: key_crc3230188
-Ref: ustar-uid-gid33452
-Ref: ustar-mtime34254
-Node: Amendments to pax format36254
-Ref: crc3236963
-Ref: flawed-compat38274
-Node: Program design42364
-Node: Multi-threaded decoding46289
-Ref: mt-extraction49570
-Node: Minimum archive sizes50876
-Node: Examples53014
-Node: Problems55381
-Node: Concept index55936
+Node: Invoking tarlz4041
+Ref: --data-size13085
+Ref: --bsolid17521
+Node: Portable character set23119
+Node: File format23762
+Ref: key_crc3230703
+Ref: ustar-uid-gid33968
+Ref: ustar-mtime34770
+Node: Amendments to pax format36770
+Ref: crc3237479
+Ref: flawed-compat38790
+Node: Program design42872
+Node: Multi-threaded decoding46797
+Ref: mt-extraction50078
+Node: Minimum archive sizes51384
+Node: Examples53511
+Node: Problems55878
+Node: Concept index56433

End Tag Table