Backup-File Format is a data archive format used by the

IBM AIX AIX (pronounced ) is a series of Proprietary software, proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM since 1986. The name stands for "Advanced Interactive eXecutive". Current versions are designed to work with Power ISA based ...

operating system. It stores copies of files in an analogous manner to the

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black b ...

format. BFF files can be created by the AIX "backup" command, and read by the corresponding "restore" command. There is no standard file suffix, although some files use .bff. However, files can be identified programmatically by their "magic number" in the first 4 bytes. This can be either 0x09006bea or 0x09006fea, in big-endian byte order. The Backup-File Format is also used for AIX software packages.Managing AIX Server Farms
Chapter 6

References

Unix archivers and compression-related utilities Computer file formats {{compu-storage-stub