21 03 | 2017

Bad support of ZIP archives with extra fields

Written by Tanguy

Classified in : Homepage, Debian, Command line, To remember

For sharing multiple files, it is often convenient to pack them into an archive, and the most widely supported format to do so is probably ZIP. Under *nix, you can archive a directory with Info-ZIP:

% zip -r something.zip something/

(When you have several files, it is recommended to archive them in a directory, to avoid cluttering the directory where people will extract them.)

Read more Bad support of ZIP archives with extra fields

09 12 | 2014

Using bsdtar to change an archive format

Written by Tanguy

Classified in : Homepage, Debian, Command line, To remember

Streamable archive formats

Package icon

Archive formats such as tar(5) and cpio(5) have the advantage of being streamable, so you can use them for transferring data with pipes and remote shells, without having to store the archive in the middle of the process, for instance:

$ cd public_html/blog
$ rgrep -lF "archive" data/articles \
      | pax -w \
      | ssh newserver "mkdir public_html/blog ;
                       cd public_html/blog ;
                       pax -r"

Read more Using bsdtar to change an archive format

21 02 | 2013

One archiver to rule them all: bsdtar

Written by Tanguy

Classified in : Homepage, Debian, Command line

Package icon

Sometimes, you have to use ZIP archives, or worse, RAR archives (curse them!), with one significant annoyance: zip, unzip, rar and unrar use a rather uncommon command line convention, compared to the usual tar, cpio and pax.

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03 09 | 2011

Repacking ZIP-based containers

Written by Tanguy

Classified in : Homepage, Debian, Command line, To remember

An open package showing two egg-like objects

Several modern complex file formats are based on a ZIP container: this is at least the case of OpenDocument and EPUB. However, they are not simply a bunch of files joined into an archive, but they follow some rules in order to be easily recognized by tools such as file. As I had to unpack, modify and repack such a container, here is a recipe to do that.

Read more Repacking ZIP-based containers

Archives