Re: [Bug-tar] RFE? tar doesn't copy file attributes or ACL's (full permissions)

[Tim Kientzle]

Linda A. Walsh wrote:
> Would it be possible to get tar to copy (or ignore) file attributes, and 
> to copy ACL's if they exist ( maybe via an option)?

There's been a little work on this over the last few years.

The native tar programs for Solaris and AIX provide
some of this, but obviously only for their particular
platforms.  As far as I know, Joerg Schilling's "star"
was one of the first to provide this using the
extension mechanism of the standard "pax extended"
format.  Joerg did a pretty good job; bsdtar and GNU tar
have each implemented some of this compatibly
with "star."

Unfortunately, the "star" extensions only
support POSIX.1e-style ACLs which are
quite a bit different from the Windows-style
ACLs (also called "NTFS" or "NFS4" ACLs).
I know Joerg was working to extend it to support
NTFS/NFS4 ACLs but haven't heard whether he ever
finished that.  That said, Joerg's work to support
POSIX.1e ACLs is well worth studying.  In particular,
Joerg worked out one important issue that both
the Solaris and AIX implementations got wrong:
Joerg included both names and numeric IDs for
every account referenced in an ACL.

A lot of people are interested in this, but
it's a matter of someone sufficiently knowledgeable
about the issues actually doing the work.
I've done some research and written up some of
my findings to help anyone who would like to
tackle this:

http://code.google.com/p/libarchive/wiki/TarNFS4ACLs

Cheers,

Tim Kientzle