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Compression

gzip

The gzip command can be used to compress single files. Add the -# replacing # with a number 1-9, for setting the compression level.

pigz

By default, gzip does not use all cores. This can be ammended by using the pigz command instead. pigz is fully compatible with gzip

tar

gzip can only compress a single file. tar (or zip - difference being inter-file compression in tar) creates a single archive file from multiple. Combining tar and gzip is the standard way of making compressed archives.

  • -c : Creates archive (recursive by default)
  • -x : Extracts the archive
  • -f : Creates archive with given filename (use - for stdout)
  • -v : Displays verbose information
  • -z : Compresses the tar file using gzip

Examples

Create a compressed archive

tar cfzv archive.tar file1 file2 file3

Decompress an archive

tar xfv archive.tar

Create a compressed archive using all CPU cores and the best compression level

tar cf - paths-to-archive | pigz -9 > archive.tar.gz