File: lzip.info, Node: Examples, Next: Problems, Prev: Trailing data, Up: Top 9 A small tutorial with examples ******************************** WARNING! Even if lzip is bug-free, other causes may result in a corrupt compressed file (bugs in the system libraries, memory errors, etc). Therefore, if the data you are going to compress are important, give the option '--keep' to lzip and don't remove the original file until you check the compressed file with a command like 'lzip -cd file.lz | cmp file -'. Most RAM errors happening during compression can only be detected by comparing the compressed file with the original because the corruption happens before lzip compresses the RAM contents, resulting in a valid compressed file containing wrong data. Example 1: Extract all the files from archive 'foo.tar.lz'. tar -xf foo.tar.lz or lzip -cd foo.tar.lz | tar -xf - Example 2: Replace a regular file with its compressed version 'file.lz' and show the compression ratio. lzip -v file Example 3: Like example 2 but the created 'file.lz' is multimember with a member size of 1 MiB. The compression ratio is not shown. lzip -b 1MiB file Example 4: Restore a regular file from its compressed version 'file.lz'. If the operation is successful, 'file.lz' is removed. lzip -d file.lz Example 5: Check the integrity of the compressed file 'file.lz' and show status. lzip -tv file.lz Example 6: The right way of concatenating the decompressed output of two or more compressed files. *Note Trailing data::. Don't do this cat file1.lz file2.lz file3.lz | lzip -d - Do this instead lzip -cd file1.lz file2.lz file3.lz Example 7: Decompress 'file.lz' partially until 10 KiB of decompressed data are produced. lzip -cd file.lz | dd bs=1024 count=10 Example 8: Decompress 'file.lz' partially from decompressed byte at offset 10000 to decompressed byte at offset 14999 (5000 bytes are produced). lzip -cd file.lz | dd bs=1000 skip=10 count=5 Example 9: Compress a whole device in /dev/sdc and send the output to 'file.lz'. lzip -c /dev/sdc > file.lz or lzip /dev/sdc -o file.lz Example 10: Create a multivolume compressed tar archive with a volume size of 1440 KiB. tar -c some_directory | lzip -S 1440KiB -o volume_name - Example 11: Extract a multivolume compressed tar archive. lzip -cd volume_name*.lz | tar -xf - Example 12: Create a multivolume compressed backup of a large database file with a volume size of 650 MB, where each volume is a multimember file with a member size of 32 MiB. lzip -b 32MiB -S 650MB big_db