RDSQUASHFS(1)

💖 RDSQUASHFS(1) 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because today we're talking about rdsquashfs — it's a User Commands girlie and she lives in section 1 of your manual. she's the tool to examine or uncompress SquashFS filesystems, and honestly? she ate. 🍓

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

rdsquashfs [OPTIONS] <squashfs-file>

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

View or extract the contents of a squashfs image. that's the whole vibe, no cap. 👑

so here's the tea: you gotta pick one of the operation options below — like, at least one, it's not optional bestie, one of those has to be present or she's just gonna sit there. 🙈

🎀 the "what are we even doing" options

• --list, -l <path> — gives you a directory listing, basically an ls -l moment, for whatever path you point at inside the SquashFS image. 💅
• --cat, -c <path> — if that path is a regular file in the image, she extracts it and dumps the contents straight to stdout. like cat but for squashfs. iconic.
• --xattr, -x <path> — if the inode that your path resolves to has extended attributes, she dumps them to stdout as key value pairs. ✨
• --unpack-path, -u <path> — unpacks that sub directory out of the image. want everything? just hit her with / and she'll unpack the whole thing. 🫶
• --describe, -d — spits out a file listing from the image that's compatible with the format gensquashfs consumes. very "handoff to my other bestie" energy.
• --stat, -s <path> — dumps all the available info about the inode that the path refers to. and I mean all — including SquashFS specific internals like the on-disk layout of a file, or the fast lookup index stored in an extended directory inode. she's nosy and we love that for her. 😭

💅 OPTIONS 💅

🌈 controlling how the operation behaves

• --unpack-root, -p <path> — used with --unpack-path, this is where the data gets unpacked to. used with --describe, it becomes a prefix for the input path of regular files. multipurpose queen.
• --no-dev, -D — skips device special files while parsing the filesystem tree.
• --no-sock, -S — skips socket files while parsing the filesystem tree.
• --no-fifo, -F — skips named pipes while parsing the filesystem tree.
• --no-slink, -L — skips symbolic links while parsing the filesystem tree.
• --no-empty-dir, -E — skips empty directories. and yes, that includes the ones that only became empty after you applied all the rules above. sneaky little things. 🦋

🧚 options that are specifically for unpacking files to disk

• --no-sparse, -Z — do not create sparse files. always unpacks sparse files by writing blocks of zeros to disk. so she's out here writing zeros like it's her job (it is).
• --set-xattr, -X — sets the extended attributes from the SquashFS image.
• --set-times, -T — sets the create and modify timestamps of the file to the mtime from the SquashFS image.
• --chmod, -C — changes the permission flags of unpacked files to whatever's stored in the SquashFS image.
• --chown, -O — changes ownership of unpacked files to the UID/GID set in the SquashFS image.
• --quiet, -q — do not print out progress while unpacking. for when you want her to just work in silence. 🤫

⭐ other options, the lil extras

• --help, -h — prints the help text and exits. classic.
• --version, -V — prints version information and exits.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

gensquashfs(1), sqfs2tar(1), sqfsdiff(1) — go read these too, they're all in the friend group. 🫶

✍️ AUTHOR ✍️

Written by David Oberhollenzer. 💖

📜 COPYRIGHT 📜

Copyright © 2019 David Oberhollenzer License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. bestie she's free but she's not making any promises, okay? 💀

and that's the whole page!! mwah 💋 — this one's from the inspect SquashFS filesystems era, dated May 2019, and it signs off as RDSQUASHFS(1). periodt. 💅✨