Example of using cpio in Linux

Find all html files in /usr/share/doc and pass this output to cpio with verbose option:

find /usr/share/doc -type f -name '*.html' | cpio -ov > backup.cpio

Create a restore directory and switch to it:

mkdir restore && cd restore

Using cpio - passing as input previous backup.cpio file: restore the contents by creating target directories and using relative filenames:

cpio -idv --no-absolute-filenames < ~/backup.cpio