Some Usages of cpio

The command cpio allows us to copy files between archives and directories. There are three operation modes: output (-o), input (-i), and pass-through (-p).

To create an archive for directory tree src, we issue:


find src -print0 | cpio -ov0 > src.cpio


To extract files from its archive just created, we issue:

cpio -ivd < src.cpio


To copy files from directory tree src to directory des, we issue:

find src -print0 | cpio -pmd0 dest


To copy files from src to dest that are less than 2 days old and whose names contain 'txt', we issue:

find src -mtime -2 -print0 | grep txt | cpio -pmd0 dest


To copy files from src to dest that are less than 2 days old and which  contain the word 'txt', we issue:

find src -mtime -2 | xargs grep -l txt | cpio -pmd0 dest




Combining with ssh (or, natcat if you are not concerned with security),  cpio allows us to access remote hosts. Here are some example:

To backup the directory tree src on a remote host, we may issue:

find src -print0 | cpio -oaV0 -H tar -O user@remotehost:src.tar

which uses ssh to copy archive file from localhost to remote host.


To copy files from src to a remote host, we issue:

find src -print0 | cpio -oaV0 -H tar | ssh user@remotehost "cpio -imd"