.CPIO File

File extension cpio is generally used for a CPIO archive used in UNIX system.

A .cpio file 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.

MIME: application/x-cpio

Files with cpio suffix are compressed archives in special CPIO format used mainly on UNIX systems.

How to open:

Many file archivers support CPIO format and can extract or repack the files.

How to convert:

Can be repacked to other compressed formats, however only some of them will be recognized in UNIX programs.