AFIO

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

With -o, reads pathnames from the standard input and writes an archive.

With -t, reads an archive and writes a table-of-contents to the standard output.

With -i, installs the contents of an archive relative to the working directory.

With -p, reads pathnames from the standard input and copies the files to each directory.

Creates missing directories as necessary, with permissions to match their parents.

Generates sparse filesystem blocks (with lseek(2)) when possible.

Supports multi-volume archives during interactive operation (i.e., when /dev/tty is accessible and SIGINT is not being ignored).

Options:

-b size

Read or write size-character archive blocks. Suffices of b, k and m denote multiples of 512, 1024 and 1048576, respectively. Defaults to 5120 for compatibility with cpio(1).

-c count

Buffer count archive blocks between I/O operations. A large count is recommended with streaming magnetic tape drives.

-d

Don't create missing directories.

-e bound

Pad the archive to a multiple of bound characters. Recognizes the same suffices as -s. Defaults to 1x (the -b block size) for compatibility with cpio(1).

-f

Spawn a child process to actually write to the archive; provides a clumsy form of double-buffering. Requires -s for multi-volume archive support.

-g

Change to input file directories. Avoids quadratic filesystem behavior with long similar pathnames. Requires all absolute pathnames, including those for the -o archive and the -p directories.

-h

Follow symbolic links, treating them as ordinary files and directories.

-j

Don't generate sparse filesystem blocks.

-k

Skip corrupt data at the beginning of an archive (rather than complaining about unrecognizable input).

-l

With -o, write file contents with each hard link.

With -t, report hard links.

With -p, attempt to link files rather than copying them.

-m

Mark output files with a common current timestamp (rather than with input file modification times).

-n

Protect newer existing files (comparing file modification times).

-s limit

Restrict each portion of a multi-volume archive to limit characters. Recognizes the same suffices as -b. Also, the suffix x denotes a multiple of the -b block size (and must follow any -b specification). Useful with finite-length devices which do not return short counts at end of media (sigh); output to magnetic tape typically falls into this category.

-u

Report files with unseen links.

-v

Verbose. Report pathnames as they are processed. With -t, gives an ls -l style report (including link information).

-x

Retain file ownership and setuid/setgid permissions. This is the default for the super-user; he may use -X to override it.

-y prefix

Restrict archive processing to names beginning with prefix. Specify once for each prefix to be recognized. Use -Y to supply prefixes which are not to be processed.

-z

Print execution statistics. This is meant for human consumption; use by other programs is officially discouraged.

-A

Do not turn absolute paths into relative paths. That is don't remove the leading slash.

-F

This is a floppy disk, -s is required. Uses shared memory if compiled in otherwise mallocs as needed (a 3b1 will not be able to malloc the needed memory w/o shared memory), afio assumes either way you can malloc/shmalloc a chunck of memory the size of one disk. Examples: 795k: 3.5" (720k drive), 316k (360k drive)

At the end of each disk this message occurs:
 Ready for disk [#] on [output] (remove the disk when the light goes out)
 Type "go" (or "GO") when ready to proceed (or "quit" to abort):

-K

Verify the output against what is in the memory copy of the disk (-F required). If the writing or verifying fails the following menu pops up (the hidden option "quit" will also exit from the backup at this point).

    [Writing/Verify] of disk [disk #] has FAILED (try option #3 first ])!
        Enter 1 to RETRY this disk
        Enter 2 to REFORMAT this disk
        Enter 3 to REFORMAT AND THEN RETRY this disk if the format works

-L Log_file_path

Specify the name of the file to log errors and the finial totals to.

-R Disk format command string

This is the command that is run when you enter 2 to reformat the disk. The default (char *formatcmd = "sh /u/store/format.sh") can be changed to a given system's default.

-Z

Compress the files on the way out, in, and passing without links (valid w/ or w/o -F or -K), requires compress and uncompress to be in your path.

Special-case archive names:

o

Specify - to read or write the standard input or output, respectively. This disables multi-volume archive handling.

o

Prefix a command string to be executed with an exclamation mark (!). The command is executed once for each archive volume, with its standard input or output piped to afio. It is expected to produce a zero exit code when all is well.

o

Use system:file to access an archive in file on system. This is really just a special case of pipelining. It requires a 4.2BSD-style remote shell (rsh(1C)) and a remote copy of afio.

o

Anything else specifies a local file or device. An output file will be created if it does not already exist.

Recognizes obsolete binary cpio(1) archives (including those from machines with reversed byte order), but cannot write them.

Recovers from archive corruption by searching for a valid magic number. This is rather simplistic, but, much like a disassembler, almost always works.

Optimizes pathnames with respect to the current and parent directories. For example, ./src/sh/../misc/afio.c becomes src/misc/afio.c.  

EXAMPLE

BUGS

Restricts pathnames to 1023 characters and 255 meaningful elements.

There is no sequence information within multi-volume archives. Input sequence errors generally masquerade as data corruption. A solution would probably be mutually exclusive with cpio(1) compatibility.

Degenerate uses of symbolic links are mangled by pathname optimization. For example, assuming that "usr.src" is a symbolic link to "/usr/src", the pathname "usr.src/../bin/cu" is mis-optimized into "bin/cu" (rather than "/usr/bin/cu").  

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

EXAMPLE

BUGS

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR