The star command can be used to create or extract an archive. Star is typically used to archive files in a system using SELinux.

Install star

Use apt-get or yum to install star.

[john.doe@server1 ~]# yum install star

Create an archive

The -c (create) and -f (file) optiions can be used to create a star archive. In this example, the contents of the /etc directory are stored in an archive named example.star. The star command is recursive, meaning that all files and folders below the parent folder will be included in the archive.

[john.doe@server1 ~]# star -c -f=/home/john.doe/example.star /etc

The -xattr and -H=exustar options are fairly common when creating a star archive. Exustar records Access Control Lists (ACLs), and xattr compares extended file attributes.

[john.doe@server1 ~]# star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f=/home/john.doe/example.star /etc

View the contents of an archive

Tbhe -t (table of contents) option can be used to view the contents of an archive. In this example, the example.star archive contains the contents of the /etc directory.

[john.doe@server1 ~]# star -t -f=/home/john.doe/example.star
abrt
adjtime
akonadi
aliases
aliases.db
. . .

Extract the contents of an archive

The -x (extract) option can be used to extract the contents of an archive. In this example, the contents of example. star are extracted to the present working directory

[john.doe@server1 ~]# star -x -f=/home/john.doe/example.star