tar(5)


NAME

     tar --- format of tape archive files

DESCRIPTION

     The tar archive format collects any number of files, directories, and
     other file system objects (symbolic links, device nodes, etc.) into a
     single stream of bytes.  The format was originally designed to be used
     with tape drives that operate with fixed-size blocks, but is widely used
     as a general packaging mechanism.

   General Format
     A tar archive consists of a series of 512-byte records.  Each file system
     object requires a header record which stores basic metadata (pathname,
     owner, permissions, etc.) and zero or more records containing any file
     data.  The end of the archive is indicated by two records consisting
     entirely of zero bytes.

     For compatibility with tape drives that use fixed block sizes, programs
     that read or write tar files always read or write a fixed number of
     records with each I/O operation.  These "blocks" are always a multiple of
     the record size.  The maximum block size supported by early
     implementations was 10240 bytes or 20 records.  This is still the default
     for most implementations although block sizes of 1MiB (2048 records) or
     larger are commonly used with modern high-speed tape drives.  (Note: the
     terms "block" and "record" here are not entirely standard; this document
     follows the convention established by John Gilmore in documenting pdtar.)

   Old-Style Archive Format
     The original tar archive format has been extended many times to include
     additional information that various implementors found necessary.  This
     section describes the variant implemented by the tar command included in
     Version 7 AT&T UNIX, which seems to be the earliest widely-used version
     of the tar program.

     The header record for an old-style tar archive consists of the following:

       struct header_old_tar {
               char name[100];
               char mode[8];
               char uid[8];
               char gid[8];
               char size[12];
               char mtime[12];
               char checksum[8];
               char linkflag[1];
               char linkname[100];
               char pad[255];
       };
     All unused bytes in the header record are filled with nulls.

     name    Pathname, stored as a null-terminated string.  Early tar
         implementations only stored regular files (including hardlinks to
         those files).  One common early convention used a trailing "/"
         character to indicate a directory name, allowing directory
         permissions and owner information to be archived and restored.

     mode    File mode, stored as an octal number in ASCII.

     uid, gid
         User id and group id of owner, as octal numbers in ASCII.

     size    Size of file, as octal number in ASCII.  For regular files only,
         this indicates the amount of data that follows the header.  In
         particular, this field was ignored by early tar implementations
         when extracting hardlinks.  Modern writers should always store a
         zero length for hardlink entries.

     mtime   Modification time of file, as an octal number in ASCII.  This
         indicates the number of seconds since the start of the epoch,
         00:00:00 UTC January 1, 1970.  Note that negative values should
         be avoided here, as they are handled inconsistently.

     checksum
         Header checksum, stored as an octal number in ASCII.  To compute
         the checksum, set the checksum field to all spaces, then sum all
         bytes in the header using unsigned arithmetic.  This field should
         be stored as six octal digits followed by a null and a space
         character.  Note that many early implementations of tar used
         signed arithmetic for the checksum field, which can cause
         interoperability problems when transferring archives between
         systems.  Modern robust readers compute the checksum both ways
         and accept the header if either computation matches.

     linkflag, linkname
         In order to preserve hardlinks and conserve tape, a file with
         multiple links is only written to the archive the first time it
         is encountered.  The next time it is encountered, the linkflag is
         set to an ASCII '1' and the linkname field holds the first name
         under which this file appears.  (Note that regular files have a
         null value in the linkflag field.)

     Early tar implementations varied in how they terminated these fields.
     The tar command in Version 7 AT&T UNIX used the following conventions
     (this is also documented in early BSD manpages): the pathname must be
     null-terminated; the mode, uid, and gid fields must end in a space and a
     null byte; the size and mtime fields must end in a space; the checksum is
     terminated by a null and a space.  Early implementations filled the
     numeric fields with leading spaces.  This seems to have been common
     practice until the IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 ("POSIX.1") standard was
     released.  For best portability, modern implementations should fill the
     numeric fields with leading zeros.

   Pre-POSIX Archives
     An early draft of IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 ("POSIX.1") served as the basis
     for John Gilmore's pdtar program and many system implementations from the
     late 1980s and early 1990s.  These archives generally follow the POSIX
     ustar format described below with the following variations:
     *       The magic value consists of the five characters "ustar" followed
         by a space.  The version field contains a space character
         followed by a null.
     *       The numeric fields are generally filled with leading spaces (not
         leading zeros as recommended in the final standard).
     *       The prefix field is often not used, limiting pathnames to the 100
         characters of old-style archives.

   POSIX ustar Archives
     IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 ("POSIX.1") defined a standard tar file format to be
     read and written by compliant implementations of tar(1).  This format is
     often called the "ustar" format, after the magic value used in the
     header.  (The name is an acronym for "Unix Standard TAR".)  It extends
     the historic format with new fields:

       struct header_posix_ustar {
               char name[100];
               char mode[8];
               char uid[8];
               char gid[8];
               char size[12];
               char mtime[12];
               char checksum[8];
               char typeflag[1];
               char linkname[100];
               char magic[6];
               char version[2];
               char uname[32];
               char gname[32];
               char devmajor[8];
               char devminor[8];
               char prefix[155];
               char pad[12];
       };

     typeflag
         Type of entry.  POSIX extended the earlier linkflag field with
         several new type values:
         "0"     Regular file.  NUL should be treated as a synonym, for
                 compatibility purposes.
         "1"     Hard link.
         "2"     Symbolic link.
         "3"     Character device node.
         "4"     Block device node.
         "5"     Directory.
         "6"     FIFO node.
         "7"     Reserved.
         Other   A POSIX-compliant implementation must treat any
                 unrecognized typeflag value as a regular file.  In
                 particular, writers should ensure that all entries have a
                 valid filename so that they can be restored by readers
                 that do not support the corresponding extension.
                 Uppercase letters "A" through "Z" are reserved for custom
                 extensions.  Note that sockets and whiteout entries are
                 not archivable.
         It is worth noting that the size field, in particular, has
         different meanings depending on the type.  For regular files, of
         course, it indicates the amount of data following the header.
         For directories, it may be used to indicate the total size of all
         files in the directory, for use by operating systems that pre-
         allocate directory space.  For all other types, it should be set
         to zero by writers and ignored by readers.

     magic   Contains the magic value "ustar" followed by a NUL byte to
         indicate that this is a POSIX standard archive.  Full compliance
         requires the uname and gname fields be properly set.

     version
         Version.  This should be "00" (two copies of the ASCII digit
         zero) for POSIX standard archives.

     uname, gname
         User and group names, as null-terminated ASCII strings.  These
         should be used in preference to the uid/gid values when they are
         set and the corresponding names exist on the system.

     devmajor, devminor
         Major and minor numbers for character device or block device
         entry.

     name, prefix
         If the pathname is too long to fit in the 100 bytes provided by
         the standard format, it can be split at any / character with the
         first portion going into the prefix field.  If the prefix field
         is not empty, the reader will prepend the prefix value and a /
         character to the regular name field to obtain the full pathname.
         The standard does not require a trailing / character on directory
         names, though most implementations still include this for
         compatibility reasons.

     Note that all unused bytes must be set to NUL.

     Field termination is specified slightly differently by POSIX than by
     previous implementations.  The magic, uname, and gname fields must have a
     trailing NUL.  The pathname, linkname, and prefix fields must have a
     trailing NUL unless they fill the entire field.  (In particular, it is
     possible to store a 256-character pathname if it happens to have a / as
     the 156th character.)  POSIX requires numeric fields to be zero-padded in
     the front, and requires them to be terminated with either space or NUL
     characters.

     Currently, most tar implementations comply with the ustar format,
     occasionally extending it by adding new fields to the blank area at the
     end of the header record.

   Numeric Extensions
     There have been several attempts to extend the range of sizes or times
     supported by modifying how numbers are stored in the header.

     One obvious extension to increase the size of files is to eliminate the
     terminating characters from the various numeric fields.  For example, the
     standard only allows the size field to contain 11 octal digits, reserving
     the twelfth byte for a trailing NUL character.  Allowing 12 octal digits
     allows file sizes up to 64 GB.

     Another extension, utilized by GNU tar, star, and other newer tar
     implementations, permits binary numbers in the standard numeric fields.
     This is flagged by setting the high bit of the first byte.  The remainder
     of the field is treated as a signed twos-complement value.  This permits
     95-bit values for the length and time fields and 63-bit values for the
     uid, gid, and device numbers.  In particular, this provides a consistent
     way to handle negative time values.  GNU tar supports this extension for
     the length, mtime, ctime, and atime fields.  Joerg Schilling's star
     program and the libarchive library support this extension for all numeric
     fields.  Note that this extension is largely obsoleted by the extended
     attribute record provided by the pax interchange format.

     Another early GNU extension allowed base-64 values rather than octal.
     This extension was short-lived and is no longer supported by any
     implementation.

   Pax Interchange Format
     There are many attributes that cannot be portably stored in a POSIX ustar
     archive.  IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1") defined a "pax interchange
     format" that uses two new types of entries to hold text-formatted
     metadata that applies to following entries.  Note that a pax interchange
     format archive is a ustar archive in every respect.  The new data is
     stored in ustar-compatible archive entries that use the "x" or "g"
     typeflag.  In particular, older implementations that do not fully support
     these extensions will extract the metadata into regular files, where the
     metadata can be examined as necessary.

     An entry in a pax interchange format archive consists of one or two
     standard ustar entries, each with its own header and data.  The first
     optional entry stores the extended attributes for the following entry.
     This optional first entry has an "x" typeflag and a size field that
     indicates the total size of the extended attributes.  The extended
     attributes themselves are stored as a series of text-format lines encoded
     in the portable UTF-8 encoding.  Each line consists of a decimal number,
     a space, a key string, an equals sign, a value string, and a new line.
     The decimal number indicates the length of the entire line, including the
     initial length field and the trailing newline.  An example of such a
     field is:
       25 ctime=1084839148.1212\n
     Keys in all lowercase are standard keys.  Vendors can add their own keys
     by prefixing them with an all uppercase vendor name and a period.  Note
     that, unlike the historic header, numeric values are stored using
     decimal, not octal.  A description of some common keys follows:

     atime, ctime, mtime
         File access, inode change, and modification times.  These fields
         can be negative or include a decimal point and a fractional
         value.

     hdrcharset
         The character set used by the pax extension values.  By default,
         all textual values in the pax extended attributes are assumed to
         be in UTF-8, including pathnames, user names, and group names.
         In some cases, it is not possible to translate local conventions
         into UTF-8.  If this key is present and the value is the six-
         character ASCII string "BINARY", then all textual values are
         assumed to be in a platform-dependent multi-byte encoding.  Note
         that there are only two valid values for this key: "BINARY" or
         "ISO-IR 10646 2000 UTF-8".  No other values are permitted by the
         standard, and the latter value should generally not be used as it
         is the default when this key is not specified.  In particular,
         this flag should not be used as a general mechanism to allow
         filenames to be stored in arbitrary encodings.

     uname, uid, gname, gid
         User name, group name, and numeric UID and GID values.  The user
         name and group name stored here are encoded in UTF8 and can thus
         include non-ASCII characters.  The UID and GID fields can be of
         arbitrary length.

     linkpath
         The full path of the linked-to file.  Note that this is encoded
         in UTF8 and can thus include non-ASCII characters.

     path    The full pathname of the entry.  Note that this is encoded in
         UTF8 and can thus include non-ASCII characters.

     realtime.*, security.*
         These keys are reserved and may be used for future
         standardization.

     size    The size of the file.  Note that there is no length limit on this
         field, allowing conforming archives to store files much larger
         than the historic 8GB limit.

     SCHILY.*
         Vendor-specific attributes used by Joerg Schilling's star
         implementation.

     SCHILY.acl.access, SCHILY.acl.default
         Stores the access and default ACLs as textual strings in a format
         that is an extension of the format specified by POSIX.1e draft
         17.  In particular, each user or group access specification can
         include a fourth colon-separated field with the numeric UID or
         GID.  This allows ACLs to be restored on systems that may not
         have complete user or group information available (such as when
         NIS/YP or LDAP services are temporarily unavailable).

     SCHILY.devminor, SCHILY.devmajor
         The full minor and major numbers for device nodes.

     SCHILY.fflags
         The file flags.

     SCHILY.realsize
         The full size of the file on disk.  XXX explain? XXX

     SCHILY.dev, SCHILY.ino, SCHILY.nlinks
         The device number, inode number, and link count for the entry.
         In particular, note that a pax interchange format archive using
         Joerg Schilling's SCHILY.* extensions can store all of the data
         from struct stat.

     LIBARCHIVE.*
         Vendor-specific attributes used by the libarchive library and
         programs that use it.

     LIBARCHIVE.creationtime
         The time when the file was created.  (This should not be confused
         with the POSIX "ctime" attribute, which refers to the time when
         the file metadata was last changed.)

     LIBARCHIVE.xattr.namespace.key
         Libarchive stores POSIX.1e-style extended attributes using keys
         of this form.  The key value is URL-encoded: All non-ASCII
         characters and the two special characters "=" and "%" are encoded
         as "%" followed by two uppercase hexadecimal digits.  The value
         of this key is the extended attribute value encoded in base 64.
         XXX Detail the base-64 format here XXX

     VENDOR.*
         XXX document other vendor-specific extensions XXX

     Any values stored in an extended attribute override the corresponding
     values in the regular tar header.  Note that compliant readers should
     ignore the regular fields when they are overridden.  This is important,
     as existing archivers are known to store non-compliant values in the
     standard header fields in this situation.  There are no limits on length
     for any of these fields.  In particular, numeric fields can be
     arbitrarily large.  All text fields are encoded in UTF8.  Compliant
     writers should store only portable 7-bit ASCII characters in the standard
     ustar header and use extended attributes whenever a text value contains
     non-ASCII characters.

     In addition to the x entry described above, the pax interchange format
     also supports a g entry.  The g entry is identical in format, but
     specifies attributes that serve as defaults for all subsequent archive
     entries.  The g entry is not widely used.

     Besides the new x and g entries, the pax interchange format has a few
     other minor variations from the earlier ustar format.  The most troubling
     one is that hardlinks are permitted to have data following them.  This
     allows readers to restore any hardlink to a file without having to rewind
     the archive to find an earlier entry.  However, it creates complications
     for robust readers, as it is no longer clear whether or not they should
     ignore the size field for hardlink entries.

   GNU Tar Archives
     The GNU tar program started with a pre-POSIX format similar to that
     described earlier and has extended it using several different mechanisms:
     It added new fields to the empty space in the header (some of which was
     later used by POSIX for conflicting purposes); it allowed the header to
     be continued over multiple records; and it defined new entries that
     modify following entries (similar in principle to the x entry described
     above, but each GNU special entry is single-purpose, unlike the general-
     purpose x entry).  As a result, GNU tar archives are not POSIX
     compatible, although more lenient POSIX-compliant readers can
     successfully extract most GNU tar archives.

       struct header_gnu_tar {
               char name[100];
               char mode[8];
               char uid[8];
               char gid[8];
               char size[12];
               char mtime[12];
               char checksum[8];
               char typeflag[1];
               char linkname[100];
               char magic[6];
               char version[2];
               char uname[32];
               char gname[32];
               char devmajor[8];
               char devminor[8];
               char atime[12];
               char ctime[12];
               char offset[12];
               char longnames[4];
               char unused[1];
               struct {
                       char offset[12];
                       char numbytes[12];
               } sparse[4];
               char isextended[1];
               char realsize[12];
               char pad[17];
       };

     typeflag
         GNU tar uses the following special entry types, in addition to
         those defined by POSIX:

         7       GNU tar treats type "7" records identically to type "0"
                 records, except on one obscure RTOS where they are used
                 to indicate the pre-allocation of a contiguous file on
                 disk.

         D       This indicates a directory entry.  Unlike the POSIX-
                 standard "5" typeflag, the header is followed by data
                 records listing the names of files in this directory.
                 Each name is preceded by an ASCII "Y" if the file is
                 stored in this archive or "N" if the file is not stored
                 in this archive.  Each name is terminated with a null,
                 and an extra null marks the end of the name list.  The
                 purpose of this entry is to support incremental backups;
                 a program restoring from such an archive may wish to
                 delete files on disk that did not exist in the directory
                 when the archive was made.

                 Note that the "D" typeflag specifically violates POSIX,
                 which requires that unrecognized typeflags be restored as
                 normal files.  In this case, restoring the "D" entry as a
                 file could interfere with subsequent creation of the
                 like-named directory.

         K       The data for this entry is a long linkname for the
                 following regular entry.

         L       The data for this entry is a long pathname for the
                 following regular entry.

         M       This is a continuation of the last file on the previous
                 volume.  GNU multi-volume archives guarantee that each
                 volume begins with a valid entry header.  To ensure this,
                 a file may be split, with part stored at the end of one
                 volume, and part stored at the beginning of the next
                 volume.  The "M" typeflag indicates that this entry
                 continues an existing file.  Such entries can only occur
                 as the first or second entry in an archive (the latter
                 only if the first entry is a volume label).  The size
                 field specifies the size of this entry.  The offset field
                 at bytes 369-380 specifies the offset where this file
                 fragment begins.  The realsize field specifies the total
                 size of the file (which must equal size plus offset).
                 When extracting, GNU tar checks that the header file name
                 is the one it is expecting, that the header offset is in
                 the correct sequence, and that the sum of offset and size
                 is equal to realsize.

         N       Type "N" records are no longer generated by GNU tar.
                 They contained a list of files to be renamed or symlinked
                 after extraction; this was originally used to support
                 long names.  The contents of this record are a text
                 description of the operations to be done, in the form
                 "Rename %s to %s\n" or "Symlink %s to %s\n"; in either
                 case, both filenames are escaped using K&R C syntax.  Due
                 to security concerns, "N" records are now generally
                 ignored when reading archives.

         S       This is a "sparse" regular file.  Sparse files are stored
                 as a series of fragments.  The header contains a list of
                 fragment offset/length pairs.  If more than four such
                 entries are required, the header is extended as necessary
                 with "extra" header extensions (an older format that is
                 no longer used), or "sparse" extensions.

         V       The name field should be interpreted as a tape/volume
                 header name.  This entry should generally be ignored on
                 extraction.

     magic   The magic field holds the five characters "ustar" followed by a
         space.  Note that POSIX ustar archives have a trailing null.

     version
         The version field holds a space character followed by a null.
         Note that POSIX ustar archives use two copies of the ASCII digit
         "0".

     atime, ctime
         The time the file was last accessed and the time of last change
         of file information, stored in octal as with mtime.

     longnames
         This field is apparently no longer used.

     Sparse offset / numbytes
         Each such structure specifies a single fragment of a sparse file.
         The two fields store values as octal numbers.  The fragments are
         each padded to a multiple of 512 bytes in the archive.  On
         extraction, the list of fragments is collected from the header
         (including any extension headers), and the data is then read and
         written to the file at appropriate offsets.

     isextended
         If this is set to non-zero, the header will be followed by
         additional "sparse header" records.  Each such record contains
         information about as many as 21 additional sparse blocks as shown
         here:

               struct gnu_sparse_header {
                       struct {
                               char offset[12];
                               char numbytes[12];
                       } sparse[21];
                       char    isextended[1];
                       char    padding[7];
               };

     realsize
         A binary representation of the file's complete size, with a much
         larger range than the POSIX file size.  In particular, with M
         type files, the current entry is only a portion of the file.  In
         that case, the POSIX size field will indicate the size of this
         entry; the realsize field will indicate the total size of the
         file.

   GNU tar pax archives
     GNU tar 1.14 (XXX check this XXX) and later will write pax interchange
     format archives when you specify the --posix flag.  This format follows
     the pax interchange format closely, using some SCHILY tags and
     introducing new keywords to store sparse file information.  There have
     been three iterations of the sparse file support, referred to as "0.0",
     "0.1", and "1.0".

     GNU.sparse.numblocks, GNU.sparse.offset, GNU.sparse.numbytes,
         GNU.sparse.size
         The "0.0" format used an initial GNU.sparse.numblocks attribute
         to indicate the number of blocks in the file, a pair of
         GNU.sparse.offset and GNU.sparse.numbytes to indicate the offset
         and size of each block, and a single GNU.sparse.size to indicate
         the full size of the file.  This is not the same as the size in
         the tar header because the latter value does not include the size
         of any holes.  This format required that the order of attributes
         be preserved and relied on readers accepting multiple appearances
         of the same attribute names, which is not officially permitted by
         the standards.

     GNU.sparse.map
         The "0.1" format used a single attribute that stored a comma-
         separated list of decimal numbers.  Each pair of numbers
         indicated the offset and size, respectively, of a block of data.
         This does not work well if the archive is extracted by an
         archiver that does not recognize this extension, since many pax
         implementations simply discard unrecognized attributes.

     GNU.sparse.major, GNU.sparse.minor, GNU.sparse.name, GNU.sparse.realsize
         The "1.0" format stores the sparse block map in one or more
         512-byte blocks prepended to the file data in the entry body.
         The pax attributes indicate the existence of this map (via the
         GNU.sparse.major and GNU.sparse.minor fields) and the full size
         of the file.  The GNU.sparse.name holds the true name of the
         file.  To avoid confusion, the name stored in the regular tar
         header is a modified name so that extraction errors will be
         apparent to users.

   Solaris Tar
     XXX More Details Needed XXX

     Solaris tar (beginning with SunOS XXX 5.7 ?? XXX) supports an "extended"
     format that is fundamentally similar to pax interchange format, with the
     following differences:
     *       Extended attributes are stored in an entry whose type is X, not
         x, as used by pax interchange format.  The detailed format of
         this entry appears to be the same as detailed above for the x
         entry.
     *       An additional A header is used to store an ACL for the following
         regular entry.  The body of this entry contains a seven-digit
         octal number followed by a zero byte, followed by the textual ACL
         description.  The octal value is the number of ACL entries plus a
         constant that indicates the ACL type: 01000000 for POSIX.1e ACLs
         and 03000000 for NFSv4 ACLs.

   AIX Tar
     XXX More details needed XXX

     AIX Tar uses a ustar-formatted header with the type A for storing coded
     ACL information.  Unlike the Solaris format, AIX tar writes this header
     after the regular file body to which it applies.  The pathname in this
     header is either NFS4 or AIXC to indicate the type of ACL stored.  The
     actual ACL is stored in platform-specific binary format.

   Mac OS X Tar
     The tar distributed with Apple's Mac OS X stores most regular files as
     two separate files in the tar archive.  The two files have the same name
     except that the first one has "._" prepended to the last path element.
     This special file stores an AppleDouble-encoded binary blob with
     additional metadata about the second file, including ACL, extended
     attributes, and resources.  To recreate the original file on disk, each
     separate file can be extracted and the Mac OS X copyfile() function can
     be used to unpack the separate metadata file and apply it to th regular
     file.  Conversely, the same function provides a "pack" option to encode
     the extended metadata from a file into a separate file whose contents can
     then be put into a tar archive.

     Note that the Apple extended attributes interact badly with long
     filenames.  Since each file is stored with the full name, a separate set
     of extensions needs to be included in the archive for each one, doubling
     the overhead required for files with long names.

   Summary of tar type codes
     The following list is a condensed summary of the type codes used in tar
     header records generated by different tar implementations.  More details
     about specific implementations can be found above:
     NUL  Early tar programs stored a zero byte for regular files.
     0    POSIX standard type code for a regular file.
     1    POSIX standard type code for a hard link description.
     2    POSIX standard type code for a symbolic link description.
     3    POSIX standard type code for a character device node.
     4    POSIX standard type code for a block device node.
     5    POSIX standard type code for a directory.
     6    POSIX standard type code for a FIFO.
     7    POSIX reserved.
     7    GNU tar used for pre-allocated files on some systems.
     A    Solaris tar ACL description stored prior to a regular file header.
     A    AIX tar ACL description stored after the file body.
     D    GNU tar directory dump.
     K    GNU tar long linkname for the following header.
     L    GNU tar long pathname for the following header.
     M    GNU tar multivolume marker, indicating the file is a continuation of
      a file from the previous volume.
     N    GNU tar long filename support.  Deprecated.
     S    GNU tar sparse regular file.
     V    GNU tar tape/volume header name.
     X    Solaris tar general-purpose extension header.
     g    POSIX pax interchange format global extensions.
     x    POSIX pax interchange format per-file extensions.

SEE ALSO

     ar(1), pax(1), tar(1)

STANDARDS

     The tar utility is no longer a part of POSIX or the Single Unix Standard.
     It last appeared in Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification ("SUSv2").
     It has been supplanted in subsequent standards by pax(1).  The ustar
     format is currently part of the specification for the pax(1) utility.
     The pax interchange file format is new with IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
     ("POSIX.1").

HISTORY

     A tar command appeared in Seventh Edition Unix, which was released in
     January, 1979.  It replaced the tp program from Fourth Edition Unix which
     in turn replaced the tap program from First Edition Unix.  John Gilmore's
     pdtar public-domain implementation (circa 1987) was highly influential
     and formed the basis of GNU tar (circa 1988).  Joerg Shilling's star
     archiver is another open-source (CDDL) archiver (originally developed
     circa 1985) which features complete support for pax interchange format.

     This documentation was written as part of the libarchive and bsdtar
     project by Tim Kientzle kientzle@FreeBSD.org.





Opportunity


Personal Opportunity - Free software gives you access to billions of dollars of software at no cost. Use this software for your business, personal use or to develop a profitable skill. Access to source code provides access to a level of capabilities/information that companies protect though copyrights. Open source is a core component of the Internet and it is available to you. Leverage the billions of dollars in resources and capabilities to build a career, establish a business or change the world. The potential is endless for those who understand the opportunity.

Business Opportunity - Goldman Sachs, IBM and countless large corporations are leveraging open source to reduce costs, develop products and increase their bottom lines. Learn what these companies know about open source and how open source can give you the advantage.





Free Software


Free Software provides computer programs and capabilities at no cost but more importantly, it provides the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. The importance of free software is a matter of access, not price. Software at no cost is a benefit but ownership rights to the software and source code is far more significant.


Free Office Software - The Libre Office suite provides top desktop productivity tools for free. This includes, a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation engine, drawing and flowcharting, database and math applications. Libre Office is available for Linux or Windows.





Free Books


The Free Books Library is a collection of thousands of the most popular public domain books in an online readable format. The collection includes great classical literature and more recent works where the U.S. copyright has expired. These books are yours to read and use without restrictions.


Source Code - Want to change a program or know how it works? Open Source provides the source code for its programs so that anyone can use, modify or learn how to write those programs themselves. Visit the GNU source code repositories to download the source.





Education


Study at Harvard, Stanford or MIT - Open edX provides free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley and other top Universities. Hundreds of courses for almost all major subjects and course levels. Open edx also offers some paid courses and selected certifications.


Linux Manual Pages - A man or manual page is a form of software documentation found on Linux/Unix operating systems. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and even abstract concepts.