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untar: NGINX HTTP Untar Module

Installation

You can install this module in any RHEL-based distribution, including, but not limited to:

  • RedHat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, 9
  • CentOS 7, 8, 9
  • AlmaLinux 8, 9
  • Rocky Linux 8, 9
  • Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023
yum -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
yum -y install nginx-module-untar

Enable the module by adding the following at the top of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

load_module modules/ngx_http_untar_module.so;

This document describes nginx-module-untar v1.1 released on Mar 21 2022.

This nginx module can serve static file content directly from tar archives. Inspired by nginx-unzip-module.

Features

  • Zero-copy: outputs content directly from archive file (no temporary files)
  • Caching parsed archive file entries: reduce archive scan-search time
  • Supported tar item types: normal file, long file name data

Configuration example

  location ~ ^/(.+?\.tar)/(.*)$ {
      untar_archive "$document_root/$1";
      untar_file "$2";
      untar;
  }

Module directives

untar_archive string

context: http, server, location

Specifies tar archive name.

untar_file string

context: http, server, location

Specifies file to be extracted from untar_archive.

untar

context: location

Invokes untar of untar_file from untar_archive

Known limitations

  • only GET,HEAD verbs supported
  • no archive entries listing
  • base tar format support (only normal files: no symlink, sparse e.t.c)

TODO

  • Limit cache archive descriptors, free expired archive descriptors
  • GNU extension modification time format

GitHub

You may find additional configuration tips and documentation for this module in the GitHub repository for nginx-module-untar.