MTREE(5) | File Formats Manual | MTREE(5)

# NAME

mtree — format of mtree dir hierarchy files

# DESCRIPTION

The mtree format is a textual format that describes a collection of filesystem objects. Such files are typically used to create or verify directory hierarchies.

## General Format

An mtree file consists of a series of lines, each providing information about a single filesystem object. Leading whitespace is always ignored.

When encoding file or pathnames, any backslash character or character outside of the 95 printable ASCII characters must be encoded as a a backslash followed by three octal digits. When reading mtree files, any appearance of a backslash followed by three octal digits should be converted into the corresponding character.

Each line is interpreted independently as one of the following types:

Signature
  The first line of any mtree file must begin with “#mtree”. If a file contains any full path entries, the first line should begin with “#mtree v2.0”, otherwise, the first line should begin with “#mtree v1.0”.
Blank
  Blank lines are ignored.
Comment
  Lines beginning with # are ignored.
Special
  Lines beginning with / are special commands that influence the interpretation of later lines.
Relative
  If the first whitespace-delimited word has no / characters, it is the name of a file in the current directory. Any relative entry that describes a directory changes the current directory.
dot-dot
  As a special case, a relative entry with the filename .. changes the current directory to the parent directory. Options on dot-dot entries are always ignored.
Full
  If the first whitespace-delimited word has a / character after the first character, it is the pathname of a file relative to the starting directory. There can be multiple full entries describing the same file.

Some tools that process mtree files may require that multiple lines describing the same file occur consecutively. It is not permitted for the same file to be mentioned using both a relative and a full file specification.

## Special commands

Two special commands are currently defined:

/set
  This command defines default values for one or more keywords. It is followed on the same line by one or more whitespace-separated keyword definitions. These definitions apply to all following files that do not specify a value for that keyword.
/unset
  This command removes any default value set by a previous /set command. It is followed on the same line by one or more keywords separated by whitespace.

## Keywords

After the filename, a full or relative entry consists of zero or more whitespace-separated keyword definitions. Each such definition consists of a key from the following list immediately followed by an '=' sign and a value. Software programs reading mtree files should warn about unrecognized keywords.

Currently supported keywords are as follows:

cksum
  The checksum of the file using the default algorithm specified by the cksum(1) utility.
contents
  The full pathname of a file that holds the contents of this file.
flags
  The file flags as a symbolic name. See chflags(1) for information on these names. If no flags are to be set the string “none” may be used to override the current default.
gid
  The file group as a numeric value.
gname
  The file group as a symbolic name.
ignore
  Ignore any file hierarchy below this file.
link
  The target of the symbolic link when type=link.
md5
  The MD5 message digest of the file.
md5digest
  A synonym for md5.
mode
  The current file's permissions as a numeric (octal) or symbolic value.
nlink
  The number of hard links the file is expected to have.
nochange
  Make sure this file or directory exists but otherwise ignore all attributes.
ripemd160digest
  The RIPEMD160 message digest of the file.
rmd160
  A synonym for ripemd160digest.
rmd160digest
  A synonym for ripemd160digest.
sha1
  The FIPS 160-1 (“SHA-1”) message digest of the file.
sha1digest
  A synonym for sha1.
sha256
  The FIPS 180-2 (“SHA-256”) message digest of the file.
sha256digest
  A synonym for sha256.
size
  The size, in bytes, of the file.
time
  The last modification time of the file.
type
  The type of the file; may be set to any one of the following:

  block
    block special device
  char
    character special device
  dir
    directory
  fifo
    fifo
  file
    regular file
  link
    symbolic link
  socket
    socket
uid
  The file owner as a numeric value.
uname
  The file owner as a symbolic name.

# SEE ALSO

cksum(1), find(1), mtree(8)

# BUGS

The FreeBSD implementation of mtree does not currently support the mtree 2.0 format. The requirement for a “#mtree” signature line is new and not yet widely implemented.

# HISTORY

The mtree utility appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno. The MD5 digest capability was added in FreeBSD 2.1, in response to the widespread use of programs which can spoof cksum(1). The SHA-1 and RIPEMD160 digests were added in FreeBSD 4.0, as new attacks have demonstrated weaknesses in MD5. The SHA-256 digest was added in FreeBSD 6.0. Support for file flags was added in FreeBSD 4.0, and mostly comes from NetBSD. The “full” entry format was added by NetBSD.

August 20, 2007 | NetBSD 7.2