GNU cpio copies files into or out of a cpio or tar archive. The archive can be another file on the disk, a magnetic tape, or a pipe.GNU cpio supports the following archive formats: binary, old ASCII, new ASCII, crc, HPUX binary, HPUX old ASCII, old tar, and POSIX.1 tar. The tar format is provided for compatability with the tar program.A cpio archive is a stream of files and directories in a single archive, and often ends with a .cpio file extension. The archive has header information that allows for an application such as the GNU cpio tool to extract the files and directories into a file system. The header of a cpio archive also contains information such as the file name, time stamp, owner and permissions