System V Release 4 CPIO archive file
File type: Archive and compressed file
A .sv4cpio file is an archive in the System V Release 4 CPIO format. It stores one or more files and directories together with archive metadata.
The format can be read and created with GNU CPIO for Windows.
File type category:
Archive and compressed file
Date updated: September 27, 2026
System V Release 4 CPIO, also called SVR4 CPIO, is an archive format associated with the CPIO utility from the UNIX System V family. The archive contains file data, names and metadata needed to recreate the archived directory structure.
GNU cpio, a free archive utility from the GNU Project, supports the SV4CPIO format among its CPIO archive formats. GNU CPIO for Windows provides this functionality on Microsoft Windows.
SV4CPIO is a historical format and is less common than newer CPIO formats, but it may still occur in software distributions, backups and archives created by System V-compatible tools. Its MIME type is application/x-sv4cpio.
On Microsoft Windows, open a .sv4cpio file with GNU CPIO for Windows. Use the program's extraction operation to unpack the archive into a directory.
If an archive does not open, it may use a different CPIO format or may be compressed separately; decompress it first when necessary.
A .sv4cpio file can be converted by extracting its contents with GNU cpio and creating a new archive in another supported format. This can produce another CPIO variant or, with a suitable archive utility, a tar or ZIP archive.
Re-archiving may not preserve every System V-specific metadata detail, so the original archive should be retained when that metadata matters.
Software applications that can open sv4cpio files:
Microsoft Windows
Software apps that create sv4cpio files:
Microsoft Windows
Software applications that handle other tasks involving sv4cpio files:
Microsoft Windows
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