Tar/dereference

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8.3.2 Symbolic Links

Normally, when tar archives a symbolic link, it writes a block to the archive naming the target of the link. In that way, the tar archive is a faithful record of the file system contents. When `--dereference' (`-h') is used with `--create' (`-c'), tar archives the files symbolic links point to, instead of the links themselves.

When creating portable archives, use `--dereference' (`-h'): some systems do not support symbolic links, and moreover, your distribution might be unusable if it contains unresolved symbolic links.

When reading from an archive, the `--dereference' (`-h') option causes tar to follow an already-existing symbolic link when tar writes or reads a file named in the archive. Ordinarily, tar does not follow such a link, though it may remove the link before writing a new file. See section Options Controlling the Overwriting of Existing Files.

The `--dereference' option is unsafe if an untrusted user can modify directories while tar is running. See section Security.

This document was generated on February, 23 2019 using texi2html 1.76.