-@address Send email to address when a volume change (tape change, floppy change) is needed, and also
when the entire operation is complete. Uses sendmail(1) to send the mail.
-a Preserve the last access times (atimes) of the files read when making or verifying an
archive. Warning: if this option is used, afio will change the last inode changed times
(ctimes) of these files. Thus, this option cannot be used together with an incremental
backup scheme that relies on the ctimes being preserved.
-bsize Read or write size-character archive blocks. Suffices of b, k, m and g denote multiples of
512, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, respectively. Defaults to 5120 for compatibility
with cpio(1). In some cases, notably when using ftape with some tape drives, -b10k is
needed for compatibility. Note that -b10k is the default block size used by tar(1), so it
is usually a good choice if the tape setup is known to work with tar(1).
-ccount Buffer count archive blocks between I/O operations. A large count is recommended for
efficient use with streaming magnetic tape drives, in order to reduce the number of tape
stops and restarts.
-d Don't create missing directories.
-ebound 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 -oarchive and the -pdirectories.
-h Follow symbolic links, treating them as ordinary files and directories.
-j Don't generate sparse filesystem blocks on restoring files. By default, afio creates sparse
filesystem blocks (with lseek(2)) when possible when restoring files from an archive, but
not if these files were stored in a compressed form. Unless stored in a compressed form,
sparse files are not archived efficiently: they will take space equal to the full file
length. (The sparse file handling in afio does not make much sense except in a historical
way.)
-k Rather than complaining about unrecognizable input, skip unreadable data (or partial file
contents) at the beginning of the archive file being read, and search for the next valid
archive header. This option is needed to deal with certain types of backup media damage.
It is also useful to support quick selective restores from multi-volume archives, or from
searchable block devices, if the volume or location of the file to be restored is known in
advance (see the -B option). If, for example, a selective restore is done with the fourth
volume of a multi-volume afio archive, then the -k option needs to be used, else afio will
complain about the input not being a well-formed archive.
-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).
-ssize Restrict each portion of a multi-volume archive to size characters. This option recognizes
the same size suffices as -b. Also, the suffix x denotes a multiple of the -b block size
(and must follow any -b specification). size can be a single size or a comma-seperated
list of sizes, for example '2m,5m,8m', to specify different sizes for the subsequent
volumes. If there are more volumes than sizes, the last specified size is used for all
remaining volumes. If this option is used, the special character sequences %V and %S in the
input/output filename or command string are replaced by the current volume number and volume
size. Use %% to produce a single % character. The -s option is 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. When an archive is being read or written, using -s
causes afio to prompt for the next volume if the specified volume length is reached. The -s
option will also cause afio to prompt if there is a premature EOF while reading the input.
The special case -s0 will activate this prompting for the next volume on premature EOF
without setting a volume length. When writing an archive, afio will prompt for the next
volume on end-of-media, even without -s0 being supplied, if the device is capable of
reporting end-of-media. If the volume size specified is not a multiple of the block size
set with the -b option, then afio(1) will silently round down the volume size to the nearest
multiple of the block size. This rounding down can be suppressed using the -9 option: if -9
is used, afio(1) will write a small block of data, smaller than the -b size, at the end of
the volume to completely fill it to the specified size. Some devices are not able to
handle such small block writes.
-u Report files with unseen links.
-v Verbose. Report pathnames (to stderr) as they are processed. When used with -t, gives an ls-l style report (including link information) to stdout instead. When used twice (-vv) with
-o, gives an ls-l style report to stdout while writing the archive. (But this use of -vv
will not work if the archive is also being written to stdout.)
-wfilename Treats each line in filename as an -y pattern, see -y.
-x Retain file ownership and setuid/setgid permissions. This is the default for the super-
user; he may use -X to override it.
-ypattern Restrict processing of files to names matching shell wildcard pattern pattern. Use this
flag once for each pattern to be recognized. With the possible exception of the presence of
a leading slash, the complete file name as appearing in the archive table-of-contents must
match the pattern, for example the file name 'etc/passwd' is matched by the pattern
'*passwd' but NOT by the pattern 'passwd'. See `man7glob' for more information on shell
wildcard pattern matching. The only difference with shell wildcard pattern matching is that
in afio the wildcards will also match '/' characters in file names. For example the pattern
'/usr/src/*' will match the file name '/usr/src/linux/Makefile', and any other file name
starting with '/usr/src'. Unless the -S option is given, any leading slash in the pattern or
the filename is ignored when matching, e.g. /etc/passwd will match etc/passwd. Use -Y to
supply patterns which are not to be processed. -Y overrides -y if a filename matches both.
See also -w and -W. See also the -7 option, which can be used to modify the meaning of -y,
-Y, -w, and -W when literal matching without wildcard processing is needed. Note: if afio
was compiled without using the GNU fnmatch library, then the full shell wildcard pattern
syntax cannot be used, and matching support is limited to patterns which are a full literal
file name and patterns which end in '*'.
-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.
Applies to the path names written in an archive, but also to the path names read out of an
archive during read (install), verify, and cataloging operations.
-B If the -v option is used, prints the byte offset of the start of each file in the archive.
If your tape drive can start reading at any position in an archive, the output of -B can be
useful for doing quick selective restores.
-Dcontrolscript
Set the control script name to controlscript, see the section on controlfiles below.
-E[+]filename|-ECS|-ECI
While creating an archive with compressed files using the -Z option, disable (attempts at)
compression for files with particular extensions. This option can be used to speed up the
creation of the archive, by making afio avoid trying to use gzip on files that contain
compressed data already. By default, if no specific -E option is given, all files with the
extensions .Z.z.gz.bz2.tgz.arc.zip.rar.lzh.lha.uc2.tpz.taz.tgz.rpm.zoo.deb.gif.jpeg.jpg.tif.tiff.png.pdf.arj.avi.bgb.cab.cpn.hqx.jar.mp3.mpg.mpq.pic.pkz.psn.sit.ogg and .smk will not be compressed. Also by default, the file extension
matching is case-insensitive (to do the right thing with respect to MS-DOS based
filesystems). The -Efilename form of this option will replace the default list of file
extensions by reading a new list of file extensions, separated by whitespace, from filename.
filename may contain comments preceded by a #. The extensions in filename should usually
all start with a dot, but they do not need to start with a dot, for example the extension
'tz' will match the file name 'hertz'. The -E+filename form (with a + sign in front of
filename) can be used to specify extensions in addition to the built-in default list,
instead of replacing the whole default list. To make extension matching case-sensitive, add
the special option form -ECS to the command line. The form -ECI invokes the (default)
case-insensitive comparison. See also the -6 option, which offers an additional way to
suppress compression.
-F This is a floppy disk, -s is required. Causes floppy writing in O_SYNC mode under Linux.
With kernel version 1.1.54 and above, this allows afio to detect some floppy errors while
writing. 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 chunk 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):
-Gfactor Specifies the gzip(1) compression speed factor, used when compressing files with the -Z
option. Factor 1 is the fastest with least compression, 9 is slowest with best compression.
The default value is 6. See also the gzip(1) manual page. If you have a slow machine or a
fast backup medium, you may want to specify a low value for factor to speed up the backup.
On large (>200k) files, -G1 typically zips twice as fast as -G6, while still achieving a
better result than compress(1). The zip speed for small files is mainly determined by the
invocation time of gzip (1), see the -T option.
-Hpromptscript
Specify a script to run, in stead of using the normal prompt, before advancing to the next
archive volume. The script will be run with the volume number, archive specification, and
the reason for changing to the next volume as arguments. The script should exit with 0 for
OK and 1 for abort, other exit codes will be treated as fatal errors. As of afio version
2.5.2, the promptscript can be a file name containing spaces or other special characters.
-J Try to continue after a media write error when doing a backup (normal behavior is to abort
with a fatal error).
-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
[Writing/Verify] of disk [disk #] has FAILED!
Enter 1 to RETRY this disk
Enter 2 to REFORMAT this disk before a RETRY
Enter quit to ABORT this backup
Currently, afio will not process the answers 1 and 2 in the right way. The menu above is
only useful in that it signifies that something is wrong.
-LLog_file_path
Specify the name of the file to log errors and the final totals to.
-Msize Specifies the maximum amount of memory to use for the temporary storage of compression
results when using the -Z option. The default is -M250m (250 megabytes). If the compressed
version of a file is larger than this (or if afio runs out of virtual memory), gzip(1) is
run twice of the file, the first time to determine the length of the result, the second time
to get the compressed data itself.
-Pprogname Use the program progname instead of the standard gzip(1) for compression and decompression
with the -Z option. For example, use the options -Z-Pbzip2 to write and install archives
using bzip2(1) compression. If progname does not have command line options (-c, -d, and
-<number>) in the style of gzip(1) then the -Q option can be used to supply the right
options. The compression program used must have the property that, if the output file size
exceeds the value of the -M option, then when the compression program is run for a second
time on the same input, it must produce an output with exactly the same size. (See also the
-M option description.) The GnuPG (gpg) encryption program does not satisfy this lenght-
preserving criterion unless its built-in compression is disabled (see examples in the afio
source script3/ directory). See also the -Q, -U and -3 options.
-Qopt Pass the option opt to the compression or decompression program used with the -Z option. For
passing multiple options, use -Q multiple times. If no -Q flag is present, the standard
options are passed. The standard options are -c-6 when the program is called for
compression and -c-d when the program is called for decompression. Use the special case -Q
"" if no options at all are to be passed to the program.
-RDiskformatcommandstring
This is the command that is run when you enter 2 to reformat the disk after a failed verify.
The default (fdformat /dev/fd0H1440) can be changed to a given system's default by editing
the Makefile. You are also prompted for formatting whenever a disk change is requested.
-S Do not ignore a leading slash in the pattern or the file name when matching -y and -Y
patterns. See also -A.
-Tthreshold Only compress a file when using the -Z option if its length is at least threshold. The
default is -T0k. This is useful if you have a slow machine or a fast backup medium.
Specifying -T3k typically halves the number of invocations of gzip(1), saving some 30%
computation time, while creating an archive that is only 5% longer. The combination -T8k-G1 typically saves 70% computation time and gives a 20% size increase. The latter
combination may be a good alternative to not using -Z at all. These figures of course
depend heavily on the kind of files in the archive and the processor - i/o speed ratio on
your machine. See also the -2 option.
-U If used with the -Z option, forces compressed versions to be stored of all files, even if
the compressed versions are bigger than the original versions, and disregarding any
(default) values of the -T and -2 options. This is useful when the -P and -Q options are
used to replace the compression program gzip with an encryption program in order to make an
archive with encrypted files. Due to internal limitations of afio, use of this flag forces
the writing of file content with each hard linked file, rather than only once for every set
of hard linked files. WARNING: use of the -U option will also cause compression (or
whatever operation the -P option indicates) on files larger than 2 GB, if these are present
in the input. Not all compression programs might handle such huge files correctly (recent
Linux versions of gzip, bzip2, and gpg have all been tested and seem to work OK). If your
setup is obscure, some testing might be warranted.
-Wfilename Treats each line in filename as an -Y pattern, see -Y.
-Ypattern Do not process files whose names match shell wildcard pattern pattern. See also -y and -W.
-Z Compress the files that go into the archive when creating an archive, or uncompress them
again when installing an archive. afio-Z will compress each file in the archive
individually, while keeping the archive headers uncompressed. Compared to tarzc style
archives, afio-Z archives are therefore much more fault-tolerant against read errors on the
backup medium. When creating an archive with the -Z option, afio will run gzip on each file
encountered, and, if the result is smaller than the original, store the compressed version
of the file. Requires gzip(1) to be in your path. Mainly to speed up afio operation,
compression is not attempted on a file if: 1) the file is very small (see the -T option), 2)
the file is very large (see the -2 option), 3) the file has a certain extension, so it
probably contains compressed data already (see the -E option), 4) the file pathname matches
a certain pattern, as set by the -6 option, 5) the file has hard links (this due to an
internal limitation of afio, but this limitation does not apply if the -l option is also
used). Regardless of the above, if the -U option is used then the compression program is
always run, and the compressed result is always stored. When installing an archive with
compressed files, the -Z option needs to be used in order to make afio automatically
uncompress the files that it compressed earlier. The -P option can be used to do the
(un)compression with programs other than gzip, see the -P (and -Q and -3) options in this
manpage for details. See also the -G option which provides yet another way to tune the
compression process.
-0 Use filenames terminated with '\0' instead of '\n'. When used as follows: find...-print0|afio-o-0..., it ensures that any input filename can be handled, even a file name
containing newlines. When used as afio-t-0...|..., this allows the table of contents
output to be parsed unambiguosly even if the filenames contain newlines. The -0 option also
affects the parsing of the files supplied by -wfile and -Wfile options: if the option -0
precedes them in the command line then the pattern lines contained in the files should be
terminated with '\0' in stead of '\n'. A second use of -0 toggles the option. This can be
useful when using multiple pattern files or when combining with the -t option.
-1warnings-to-ignore
Control if afio(1) should exit with a nonzero code after printing certain warning messages,
and if certain warning messages should be printed at all. This option is sometimes useful
when calling afio(1) from inside a backup script or program. afio(1) will exit with a
nonzero code on encountering various 'hard' errors, and also (with the default value of the
-1 option) when it has printed certain warning messages during execution. warnings-to-ignore is a list of letters which determines the behavior related to warning messages. The
default value for this option is -1mc. For afio versions 2.4.3 and earlier, the default
was -1a. For afio versions 2.4.4 and 2.4.5, the default was -1''. The defined warnings-to-ignore letters are as follows. a is for for ignoring all possible warnings on exit: if
this letter is used, the printing of a warning message will never cause a nonzero exit code.
m is for ignoring in the exit code any warning about missing files, which will be printed
when, on creating an archive, a file whose name was read from the standard input is not
found. c is for ignoring in the exit code the warning that the archive being created will
not be not fully compatible with cpio or afio versions 2.4.7 or lower. C is the same as c,
but in addition the warning message will not even be printed. M will suppress the printing
of all warning messages asssociated with Multivolume archive handling, messages like "Output
limit reached" and "Continuing". d is for ignoring in the exit code any warnings about
changed files, which will be printed when, on creating an archive, a file that is being
archived changes while it is being written into the archive, where the changing is detected
by examining the file modification time stamp. r is for ignoring certain warnings during
the verify (-r) operation. If this letter is used, some verification errors that are very
probably due to changes in the filesystem, during or after the backup was made, are ignored
in determining the exit code. The two verification errors that are ignored are: 1) a file
in the archive is no longer present on the filesystem, and 2) the file contents in the
archive and on the filesystem are different, but the file lengths or the file modification
times are also different, so the difference in contents is probably due to the file on the
file system having been changed. s is for ignoring in the exit code the warning printed
when the protection code (as described in the section about the -8 option) rewrites a
suspicious path name for a file or symlink that is being unpacked. l is for ignoring in the
exit code the warning printed when the -8nosymlinks option is used and a symlink is
encountered. n is for ignoring in the exit code a particular class of no-such-file
warnings: it ignores these warnings when they happen after the file has already been
successfully opened. This unusual warning situation can occur when archiving files on
Windows smbfs filesystems -- due to a Windows problem, smbfs files with non-ASCII characters
in their names can sometimes be opened but not read. When the -Z option is used, the n
letter function is (currently) only implemented for files with sizes smaller than indicated
by the -T option, so in that case the -T option is also needed for this letter to have any
effect.
-2maximum-file-size-to-compress
Do not compress any files which are larger than this size when making a compressed archive
with the -Z option. The default value is -2200m (200 Megabytes). This maximum size cutoff
lowers the risk that a major portion of a large file will be irrecoverable due to small
media errors. If a media error occurs while reading a file that afio has stored in a
compressed form, then afio and gzip will not be able to restore the entire remainder of that
file. This is usually an acceptable risk for small files. However for very large files the
risk of loosing a large amount of data because of this effect will usually be too big. The
special case -20 eliminates any maximum size cutoff.
-3filedescriptor-nr
Rewind the filedescriptor before invoking the (un)compression program if using the -Z
option. This is useful when the -P and -Q options are used to replace the compression
program gzip with some types of encryption programs in order to make or read an archive with
encrypted files. The rewinding is needed to interface correctly with some encryption
programs that read their key from an open filedescriptor. If the -P program name matches
'pgp' or 'gpg', then the -3 option must be used to avoid afio(1) reporting an error. Use
the special case -30 to suppress the error message without rewinding any file descriptor.
The -30 option may also be needed to successfully read back encrypted archives made with
afio version 2.4.5 and older.
-4 (Deprecated, the intended effect of this option is now archived by default as long as the -5
option is not used. This option could still be useful for compatibility with machines
running an older version of afio.) Write archive with the `extended ASCII' format headers
which use 4-byte inode numbers. Archives using the extended ASCII format headers are not
compatible with any other archiver. This option was useful for reliably creating and
restoring sets of files with many internal hard links, for example a news spool.
-5 Refuse to create an archive that is incompatible with cpio(1). If this option is used, afio
will never write any `large ASCII' file headers that are incompatible with cpio(1), but fail
with an error code instead. See the ARCHIVE PORTABILITY section above for more information
on the use of `large ASCII' file headers.
-6filename While creating an archive with compressed files using the -Z option, disable (attempts at)
compression for files that match particular shell patterns. This option can be used to
speed up the creation of the archive, by making afio avoid trying to use gzip on files that
contain compressed data already. Reads shell wildcard patterns from filename, treating each
line in the file as a pattern. Files whose names match these patterns are not to be
compressed when using the -Z option. Pattern matching is done in exactly the same way as
described for the -y option. See also the -E option: the (default) settings of the -E
option will further restrict compression attempts. The -E option controls compression
attempts based on file extensions; the -6 option is mainly intended as a method for
excluding all files in certain subdirectory trees from compression..
-7 Switch between shell wildcard pattern matching and exact name matching (without interpreting
any wildcard characters) for the patterns supplied in the -y, -Y, -w, and -W options. If
the -7 option is used in front of any option -y, -Y, -w, or -W, then the patterns supplied
in these options are not intrerpreted as wildcard patterns, but as character strings that
must match exactly to the file name, except possibly in leading slashes. This option can be
useful for handling the exceptional cases where file names in the archive, or the names of
files to be archived, contain wildcard characters themselves. For example, find/tmp-print0|afio-ov-Y'*.jpg'-7-Y'/tmp/a[12]*4'-0archive can be used to archive files
all files under /tmp, even files with a '\n' character in the name, except for .jpg files
and the file with the exact name /tmp/a[12]*4. A second use of -7 toggles the matching for
subsequently occurring -y, -Y, -w, and -W back to shell wildcard pattern matching.
-8directive Modify various behavior regarding symlinks. The directive nosymlinks applies to both
archive creation and archive unpacking. During archive creation, it suppresses the
inclusion of any symlink entry in the archive. In unpacking, it suppresses the unpacking of
any symlink entry in the archive. This directive does not affect the interpretation of
existing symlinks on the filesystem during the path resolution process where afio resolves
the directory name components in front of the last / in a path name. The directive
allowinsecurepaths applies to the security of archive unpacking. As of version 2.5.2, afio
has protection mechanisms that apply to the unpacking of potentially untrusted archives. On
unpacking, afio will by default (since version 2.5.2) inspect every pathname in the archive
to detect the occurrence of a .. subpath in it. If one or more of these are present this is
almost almost certainly due to the archive having been constructed by an attacker. The goal
of the attack would be to have the afio unpacking operation over-write system or user files
with new contents, via the use of using specially constructed path names like
../../../../../etc/password or ../../../../../home/a_user/.bashrc that resolve to the
location of such configuration files. Therefore, if any .. subpaths are detected in a path
name in an archive being unpacked, afio issues a warning, and then rewrites every '..' in
the path name to 'XX', and the archive entry is unpacked to the rewritten path name instead.
The allowinsecurepaths directive disables the above rewriting of likely-insecure path names.
Note that afio, while unpacking an archive, will also protect against that archive including
potentially insecure path names that start with a leading /, by stripping off the leading /
before using the path name is used, which has the effect of the archive entry relative to
the current working directory. This stripping behavior can be disabled with the -A option.
The directive allowinsecuresymlinks applies to a further the protection mechanism that
applies to the unpacking of potentially untrusted archives. On unpacking, afio will by
default (since version 2.5.2) inspect every symlink destination in the archive to detect the
occurrence of a leading / or a .. subpath in it. If a leading / or .. subpaths are
detected in the symlink destination, afio issues a warning, rewrites them to X or XX, and
the result is used as the unpacked symlink destination instead. The allowinsecuresymlinks
directive disables this protective rewriting behavior. Some further background: an
attacking archive with an insecure symlink will typically include, as an entry after the
insecure symlink, a file entry with a path that follows the insecure symlink leading to a
location in the filesystem where a system or user configuration file can be overwritten. An
archive with an insecure symlink may be created most easily an attacker who has the entire
archive creation process under their control. However, in another case, the attacker is an
untrusted end user on a multi-user system, where a trusted system administrator is creating
a backup of a live file system containing directories under control of the untrusted end
user. The untrusted end user can potentially exploit race conditions in the backup process,
by creating temporary symlinks and files in their own home directory, resulting in in
archive contents that would modify system configuration files when later unpacked if the
protection mechanism were disabled using the allowinsecuresymlinks directive. The above
described protection mechanisms are limited to symlinks. A untrusted archive attack that
uses specially constructed hard link entries in the archive is theoretically possible with
some archivers, but is not possible with afio, because of the special way that afio
represents hard links in an archive.
-9 Do not round down any -s volume sizes to the nearest -b block size. See the -s option.
Install Now
PNG Icons
Emojis
