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- PAX - Portable Archive Interchange
-
- Copyright (C) 1989 Mark H. Colburn
- All Rights Reserved.
-
-
- Introduction
-
- This is version 2.0 of Pax, an archiving utility.
-
- Pax is an archiving utility that reads and writes tar and cpio formats,
- both the traditional ones and the extended formats specified in IEEE
- 1003.1. It handles multi-volume archives and automatically determines
- the format of an archive while reading it. Three user interfaces are
- supported: tar, cpio, and pax. The pax interface was designed by IEEE
- 1003.2 as a compromise in the chronic controversy over which of tar or
- cpio is best.
-
- The Pax utility is being distributed free of charge and may be
- redistributed by others in either source or binary form. (See the
- liscensing section for restrictions)
-
- The source for Pax has been posted to comp.sources.unix on USENET and
- will also be available by anonymous FTP on the Internet from uunet.uu.net,
- moon.src.honeywell.com and from ucb-arpa.berkeley.edu. The source
- to Pax is also available via anonymous UUCP from minnetech.mn.org, the
- author's home machine and possibly other sites.
-
- The source for Pax will continue to change as long as the definition of
- the utility is modified by the 1003.2 working group. (For example,
- there are a number of changes in Draft 8 which will be incorporated as
- soon as Draft 8 is available). Additional modifications will be made
- based on user input, such as request for support of additional archive
- formats, etc. Patches and new releases will be made as new functionality
- is added or problems are diagnosed and fixed.
-
-
- Installation
-
- In order to install Pax, you must run the Configure script.
- In addition, if your systems does not have at least a somewhat POSIX
- compliant <limits.h>, then you may have to tweak some of the values in
- limits.h.
-
- Portability
-
- Pax is intended to run on as many systems as possible. If you have
- problems getting Pax to compile or run on your system, please let me
- know so that the source or the installation procedure can be modified.
-
- Pax has been tested and appears to run correctly on the following
- machines:
-
- Machine Operating System/Release
- ---------------------------------------------------
- Altos 586 System III (2.3)
- AT&T UNIX PC System V.2 (Release 3.51)
- Convergent S/320 CTIX/68k 6.1, UNIX SysV 3.1
- Convergent S/80 CTIX/68k 6.1, UNIX SysV 3.1
- Cray 2 UNICOS
- Encore CC 02.00.r088
- HP 9000 HP/UX 6.0.1
- IBM PC/AT Microport SV/AT V2.4
- Mac II A/UX 1.0
- NCR Tower System V.2
- Pyramid AT&T and Berkeley universe
- Sequent Symetry Dynix 3.0
- SGI Iris 4D/60G UNIX 3.0
- SGI Iris 4D/70G UNIX 3.0
- SCO Xenix 386 2.3.2
- SCO Unix 386 3.2
- Sun 2 SunOS 3.4
- Sun 2 SunOS 3.5
- Sun 3 SunOS 3.4
- Sun 3 SunOS 3.5
- Sun 3 SunOS 4.0
- Sun 4 SunOS 4.0
- VAX 8750 BSD 4.3 (Mt. Xinu)
- VAX 8650 BSD 4.3 (Mt. Xinu)
- VAX 780 BSD 4.3 (Berkeley)
- ---------------------------------------------------
-
- In future releases, the source will be moving toward ANSI C and POSIX
- compatibility. This should allow for portability over any system
- supporting both ANSI and POSIX. In addition, POSIX/ANSI portability
- library routines will be developed which will allow the code to run on
- the standard machines available now.
-
-
- DOS stuff:
-
- It has been tested only with the Microsoft C V5.1 compiler and
- MASM V5.1. It supports both the DOS filesystem and the raw
- "tape on a disk" system used by micro UN*X systems. For more
- details, see below. This will allow for easy transfer of files
- to and from UN*X systems. Multiple volumes and the tar append
- option are supported.
-
- To get PAX.EXE and CPIO.EXE just copy TAR.EXE to PAX.EXE and
- CPIO.EXE. Since MSDOS 2.X does not report the file name to the
- program, those users (and anyone else that wants to) can set the
- environment variable PAXNAM to the program name that they want
- (ie. set PAXNAM=tar). Note that both tar and cpio archives can
- be accessed through the pax interface.
-
- This program does not do ANY translation on data files. File and
- directory names have their backslashes changed to forward slashes and
- uppercase changed to lowercase when writing an archive on an MSDOS
- machine. File and directory names are truncated to an 8 character name
- and a 3 character extension on extraction from an archive along with
- translation of '.' to '_' where appropriate and translation to
- monocase.
-
- Unix style shell regular expressions are now supported on the command
- line. To prevent expansion enclose the argument in single quotes
- (backslashes don't work, they are simply translated into forward
- slashes). If a *.* is encountered, the program warns the user that to
- get all the files he needs to use a * instead and proceeds to archive
- filenames with a period in them. A trailing slash on a filename
- matches a directory. Arguments with spaces in them need to be
- enclosed in double quotes (ie. "'with space'").
-
- True dos character device support (eg. a tape drive with a
- character device driver, inspired by John B. Theil) has been
- added, but is only available when the archive filename is
- supplied on the command line (not stdin-stdout).
-
- To use the raw "tape on a disk" feature give an archive filename
- of "a:dio" or "b:dio" (dio stands for direct I/O) for floppy
- drives "a" and "b". This program will support any media
- supported by DOS, but you MUST do a DIR on an MSDOS formatted
- disk at the density you want to use before using PAX, TAR, or
- CPIO with direct I/O. Note that the direct I/O destroys the
- logical structure of the disk.
-
- Floppy disk type specification is now supported on the
- command line for the raw disk interface. This gets rid of
- having to do the disk exchange, although the disk exchange
- method still works. The following floppy disk types are
- supported under pax, tar, and cpio.
-
- Abbreviation Type
- ld DSDD 360k 5 1/4 inch
- hd DSHD 1.2M 5 1/4 inch
- l3 DSSD 720k 3 1/2 inch
- h3 DSDD 1.44M 3 1/2 inch
-
- The abbreviation is tacked onto the end of [ab]:dio?? like
- a:diold or b:diohd. Examples are given below.
-
- The default blocking factor for tar has been changed to 20.
-
- Examples:
-
- Using direct i/o on a floppy with tar.exe and a high density
- formatted 5 1/4 inch floppy disk (a:diohd and b:diohd are special)
-
- 1) Put the formatted high density floppy in drive "a"
- 2) tar cvf a:diohd .
-
- Using direct i/o on a floppy with tar.exe (a:dio and b:dio are special)
-
- 1) Put high or low density MSDOS formatted floppy in drive "a".
- 2) Do a DIR (this is a required step)
- 3) Remove the floppy
- 4) Put a floppy in drive "a" with the same density as step 1
- 5) tar cvf a:dio .
-
- Using direct i/o on a floppy with cpio.exe (a:dio and b:dio are special)
-
- 1) Put high or low density MSDOS formatted floppy in drive "a".
- 2) Do a DIR (this is a required step)
- 3) Remove the floppy
- 4) Put a floppy in drive "a" with the same density as step 1
- 5) find . -print | cpio -ocvBD a:dio
- (note the undocumented D option to specify the
- archive, works on reads too)
-
- Using direct i/o on a floppy with pax.exe and the tar archive format
- (a:dio and b:dio are special)
-
- 1) Put high or low density MSDOS formatted floppy in drive "a".
- 2) Do a DIR (this is a required step)
- 3) Remove the floppy
- 4) Put a floppy in drive "a" with the same density as step 1
- 5) pax -w -b 20b -f a:dio .
-
- Using tar.exe within the MSDOS filesystem (the filename does not matter)
- Will not destroy the logical structure of the disk. Similarly for
- cpio.exe and pax.exe.
-
- 1) Put high or low density MSDOS formatted floppy in drive "a".
- 2) tar cvf a:whatever.tar .
-
- Using tar.exe within the MSDOS filesystem to a character device like a
- tape drive.
-
- 1) Put tape in tape drive
- 2) tar cvf /dev/tape .
-
-
- Credit Where Credit is Due
-
- Parts of the code which makes up Pax were gleaned from a number of
- different sources: the directory access routines in ./dirent/ are
- copies of Doug Gwyn's dirent library; some of the tar archive
- routines were initially written by John Gilmore for his PDTAR;
- Harold Walters provided the basis for the MSDOS support and
- finally afio, written by Mark Brukhartz at Lachman Associates, was
- the basis for the buffering schemes used in pax.
-
-
- Licensing
-
- Copyright (c) 1989 Mark H. Colburn.
- All rights reserved.
-
- Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
- provided that the above copyright notice is duplicated in all such
- forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other
- materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the
- software was developed by Mark H. Colburn.
-
- THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
- IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
- WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
-
- Please report any bug or problems to:
-
- Mark Colburn
- Open Systems Architects, Inc.
- 7555 Marketplace Drive
- Eden Prairie, MN 55344
-
- mark@minnetech.MN.ORG
-