(tar.info)Portability


Making `tar' Archives More Portable
===================================

   Creating a `tar' archive on a particular system that is meant to be
useful later on many other machines and with other versions of `tar' is
more challenging than you might think.  `tar' archive formats have been
evolving since the first versions of Unix.  Many such formats are
around, and are not always compatible with each other.  This section
discusses a few problems, and gives some advice about making `tar'
archives more portable.

   One golden rule is simplicity.  For example, limit your `tar'
archives to contain only regular files and directories, avoiding other
kind of special files.  Do not attempt to save sparse files or
contiguous files as such.  Let's discuss a few more problems, in turn.

Portable Names: Portable Names
dereference: Symbolic Links
old: Old V7 Archives
posix: POSIX archives
Checksumming: Checksumming Problems
Large or Negative Values: Large files, negative time stamps, etc.

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