Beyond Linux® From Scratch - Version 8.3

Chapter 12. System Utilities

Pax-20161104

Introduction to Pax

pax is an archiving utility created by POSIX and defined by the POSIX.1-2001 standard. Rather than sort out the incompatible options that have crept up between tar and cpio, along with their implementations across various versions of UNIX, the IEEE designed a new archive utility. The name “pax” is an acronym for portable archive exchange. Furthermore, “pax” means “peace” in Latin, so its name implies that it shall create peace between the tar and cpio format supporters. The command invocation and command structure is somewhat a unification of both tar and cpio.

pax has been required to be present in LSB conformant systems since LSB version 3.0.

This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS-8.3 platform.

Package Information

Pax Dependencies

Required

cpio-2.12

User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/pax

Installation of Pax

This package has somewhat unusual installation instructions, because pax is part of a larger set of utilities included in the same tarball. Issue the following commands to unpack and build the application: 

gzip -dck paxmirabilis-20161104.cpio.gz | cpio -mid &&
cd pax &&

sed -i '/stat.h/a #include <sys/sysmacros.h>' cpio.c gen_subs.c tar.c &&

cc -O2 -DLONG_OFF_T -o pax -DPAX_SAFE_PATH=\"/bin\" *.c

Now, as the root user: 

install -v pax /bin &&
install -v pax.1 /usr/share/man/man1

Command Explanations

sed ...: This eliminates some irritating warnings.

Contents

Installed Program: pax

Short Descriptions

pax

copies files to and from archives in several formats.

Last updated on 2018-08-25 14:33:31 -0700