Star is a very fast, POSIX-compliant tar archiver. The software can read POSIX compliant tar archives as well as non-POSIX GNU tar archives.

Star saves many files together into a single tape or disk archive, and can restore individual files from the archive. It includes command line interfaces for the "tar", "Sun-Tar", "cpio", "pax", and "gnutar" command-line syntax.

Star is the first free POSIX 1-200x compliant tar implementation. It runs on Solaris, Sparc and Sun4u operating systems.

Star is packed with a number of advantages. It includes a FIFO for faster backup, a pattern matcher for convenient user interface, remote tape support and multi-volume support, and the ability to archive sparse files and ACLs. Star also has the ability to archive extended file flags, automatic archive format detection, automatic byte order recognition, automatic archive compression/decompression, and remote archives.

Star comes with sophisticated error controls that enable Star to detect which error types should be ignored for which file name pattern. This allows writing backup scripts that give no error messages for tolerable problems. It includes the only known platform independent "rmt" server program.