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  • I guess I really ought to learn pax, but tar and cpio still stand me well. +1 Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:21
  • @roaima - strictly speaking, while there is an actual pax archive format (which is an extension to the ustar format), the POSIX-spec'd pax utility reads/writes cpio, pax, and ustar formats. Because all three archive types amount primarily just to different means of encoding the metadata for many files alongside said files' actual data into a single stream, it isn't really too much of a stretch. I once wrote shitar - which was just a few lines of shell-script for - mostly dd - taring block devs on the fly based on the POSIX spec. Commented May 26, 2015 at 20:50
  • I like your linked script; strangely it would have been very useful a couple of months ago for exactly that same purpose. Oh well. I might even try to stop using cpio -H ustar ... Commented May 26, 2015 at 22:33