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Version: 1.0.0

How to List Files Without Downloading

Inspect the contents of a remote image without downloading the full blob.

Prerequisites​

  • blobber installed
  • Registry access configured

Basic Listing​

List files in an image:

blobber list ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1

Output:

app.yaml
config/database.yaml
config/server.yaml

Detailed Listing​

Add -l for file sizes and permissions:

blobber list -l ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1

Output:

app.yaml              52      0644
config/database.yaml  128     0644
config/server.yaml    96      0644

Columns: path, size (bytes), mode (octal).

Using the Alias​

ls is an alias for list:

blobber ls ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1
blobber ls -l ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1

Scripting Examples​

Check if a file exists​

if blobber list ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1 | grep -q "app.yaml"; then
  echo "File exists"
fi

Count files​

blobber list ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1 | wc -l

Get total size​

blobber list -l ghcr.io/myorg/config:v1 | awk '{sum += $2} END {print sum " bytes"}'

Find large files​

blobber list -l ghcr.io/myorg/data:v1 | awk '$2 > 1000000 {print}'

Why This Is Efficient​

Blobber uses eStargz format, which stores a table of contents at the end of the archive. Listing files only downloads this index, not the file contents.

For a 1GB image, listing might download only a few KB.

See Also​