path: root/doc/lzip.info

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INFO-DIR-SECTION Data Compression
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* Lzip: (lzip).                 Data compressor based on the LZMA algorithm
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY


File: lzip.info,  Node: Top,  Next: Introduction,  Up: (dir)

Lzip Manual
***********

This manual is for Lzip (version 1.9, 17 January 2010).

* Menu:

* Introduction::	Purpose and features of lzip
* Algorithm::		How lzip compresses the data
* Invoking Lzip::	Command line interface
* File Format::		Detailed format of the compressed file
* Examples::		A small tutorial with examples
* Lziprecover::		Recovering data from damaged compressed files
* Problems::		Reporting bugs
* Concept Index::	Index of concepts


   Copyright (C) 2008, 2009, 2010 Antonio Diaz Diaz.

   This manual is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to
copy, distribute and modify it.


File: lzip.info,  Node: Introduction,  Next: Algorithm,  Prev: Top,  Up: Top

1 Introduction
**************

Lzip is a lossless data compressor based on the LZMA algorithm, with
very safe integrity checking and a user interface similar to the one of
gzip or bzip2. Lzip decompresses almost as fast as gzip and compresses
better than bzip2, which makes it well suited for software distribution
and data archiving.

   Lzip replaces every file given in the command line with a compressed
version of itself, with the name "original_name.lz". Each compressed
file has the same modification date, permissions, and, when possible,
ownership as the corresponding original, so that these properties can be
correctly restored at decompression time. Lzip is able to read from some
types of non regular files if the `--stdout' option is specified.

   If no file names are specified, lzip compresses (or decompresses)
from standard input to standard output. In this case, lzip will decline
to write compressed output to a terminal, as this would be entirely
incomprehensible and therefore pointless.

   Lzip will correctly decompress a file which is the concatenation of
two or more compressed files. The result is the concatenation of the
corresponding uncompressed files. Integrity testing of concatenated
compressed files is also supported.

   Lzip can produce multimember files and safely recover, with
lziprecover, the undamaged members in case of file damage. Lzip can
also split the compressed output in volumes of a given size, even when
reading from standard input. This allows the direct creation of
multivolume compressed tar archives.

   The amount of memory required for compression is about 5 MiB plus 1
or 2 times the dictionary size limit (1 if input file size is less than
dictionary size limit, else 2) plus 8 times the dictionary size really
used. For decompression is a little more than the dictionary size really
used. Lzip will automatically use the smallest possible dictionary size
without exceeding the given limit. It is important to appreciate that
the decompression memory requirement is affected at compression time by
the choice of dictionary size limit.

   When decompressing, lzip attempts to guess the name for the
decompressed file from that of the compressed file as follows:

filename.lz    becomes   filename
filename.tlz   becomes   filename.tar
anyothername   becomes   anyothername.out

   As a self-check for your protection, lzip stores in the member
trailer the 32-bit CRC of the original data and the size of the
original data, to make sure that the decompressed version of the data
is identical to the original. This guards against corruption of the
compressed data, and against undetected bugs in lzip (hopefully very
unlikely). The chances of data corruption going undetected are
microscopic, less than one chance in 4000 million for each member
processed. Be aware, though, that the check occurs upon decompression,
so it can only tell you that something is wrong. It can't help you
recover the original uncompressed data.

   Return values: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems
(file not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, etc), 2 to indicate a
corrupt or invalid input file, 3 for an internal consistency error (eg,
bug) which caused lzip to panic.


File: lzip.info,  Node: Algorithm,  Next: Invoking Lzip,  Prev: Introduction,  Up: Top

2 Algorithm
***********

Lzip implements a simplified version of the LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov
chain-Algorithm) algorithm. The original LZMA algorithm was designed by
Igor Pavlov.

   The high compression of LZMA comes from combining two basic,
well-proven compression ideas: sliding dictionaries (LZ77/78) and
markov models (the thing used by every compression algorithm that uses
a range encoder or similar order-0 entropy coder as its last stage)
with segregation of contexts according to what the bits are used for.

   Lzip is a two stage compressor. The first stage is a Lempel-Ziv
coder, which reduces redundancy by translating chunks of data to their
corresponding distance-length pairs. The second stage is a range encoder
that uses a different probability model for each type of data;
distances, lengths, literal bytes, etc.

   The match finder, part of the LZ coder, is the most important piece
of the LZMA algorithm, as it is in many Lempel-Ziv based algorithms.
Most of lzip's execution time is spent in the match finder, and it has
the greatest influence on the compression ratio.

   Here is how it works, step by step:

   1) The member header is written to the output stream.

   2) The first byte is coded literally, because there are no previous
bytes to which the match finder can refer to.

   3) The main encoder advances to the next byte in the input data and
calls the match finder.

   4) The match finder fills an array with the minimum distances before
the current byte where a match of a given length can be found.

   5) Go back to step 3 until a sequence (formed of pairs, repeated
distances and literal bytes) of minimum price has been formed. Where the
price represents the number of output bits produced.

   6) The range encoder encodes the sequence produced by the main
encoder and sends the produced bytes to the output stream.

   7) Go back to step 3 until the input data is finished or until the
member or volume size limits are reached.

   8) The range encoder is flushed.

   9) The member trailer is written to the output stream.

   10) If there are more data to compress, go back to step 1.


File: lzip.info,  Node: Invoking Lzip,  Next: File Format,  Prev: Algorithm,  Up: Top

3 Invoking Lzip
***************

The format for running lzip is:

     lzip [OPTIONS] [FILES]

   Lzip supports the following options:

`--help'
`-h'
     Print an informative help message describing the options and exit.

`--version'
`-V'
     Print the version number of lzip on the standard output and exit.

`--member-size=SIZE'
`-b SIZE'
     Produce a multimember file and set the member size limit to SIZE
     bytes. Minimum member size limit is 100kB. Small member size may
     degrade compression ratio, so use it only when needed. The default
     is to produce single member files.

`--stdout'
`-c'
     Compress or decompress to standard output. Needed when reading
     from a named pipe (fifo) or from a device. Use it to recover as
     much of the uncompressed data as possible when decompressing a
     corrupt file.

`--decompress'
`-d'
     Decompress.

`--force'
`-f'
     Force overwrite of output file.

`--keep'
`-k'
     Keep (don't delete) input files during compression or
     decompression.

`--match-length=LENGTH'
`-m LENGTH'
     Set the match length limit in bytes. Valid values range from 5 to
     273.  Larger values usually give better compression ratios but
     longer compression times.

`--output=FILE'
`-o FILE'
     When reading from standard input and `--stdout' has not been
     specified, use `FILE' as the virtual name of the uncompressed
     file. This produces a file named `FILE' when decompressing, a file
     named `FILE.lz' when compressing, and several files named
     `FILE00001.lz', `FILE00002.lz', etc, when compressing and
     splitting the output in volumes.

`--quiet'
`-q'
     Quiet operation. Suppress all messages.

`--dictionary-size=SIZE'
`-s SIZE'
     Set the dictionary size limit in bytes. Valid values range from
     4KiB to 512MiB. Lzip will use the smallest possible dictionary
     size for each member without exceeding this limit. Note that
     dictionary sizes are quantized. If the specified size does not
     match one of the valid sizes, it will be rounded upwards.

`--volume-size=SIZE'
`-S SIZE'
     Split the compressed output into several volume files with names
     `original_name00001.lz', `original_name00002.lz', etc, and set the
     volume size limit to SIZE bytes. Each volume is a complete, maybe
     multimember, lzip file. Minimum volume size limit is 100kB. Small
     volume size may degrade compression ratio, so use it only when
     needed.

`--test'
`-t'
     Check integrity of the specified file(s), but don't decompress
     them.  This really performs a trial decompression and throws away
     the result.  Use `-tvv' or `-tvvv' to see information about the
     file.

`--verbose'
`-v'
     Verbose mode. Show the compression ratio for each file processed.
     Further -v's increase the verbosity level.

`-1 .. -9'
     Set the compression parameters (dictionary size and match length
     limit) as shown in the table below. Note that `-9' can be much
     slower than `-1'. These options have no effect when decompressing.

     Level   Dictionary size   Match length limit
     -1      1MiB              10 bytes
     -2      1MiB              12 bytes
     -3      1MiB              17 bytes
     -4      2MiB              26 bytes
     -5      4MiB              44 bytes
     -6      8MiB              80 bytes
     -7      16MiB             108 bytes
     -8      16MiB             163 bytes
     -9      32MiB             273 bytes

`--fast'
`--best'
     Aliases for GNU gzip compatibility.



   Numbers given as arguments to options may be followed by a multiplier
and an optional `B' for "byte".

   Table of SI and binary prefixes (unit multipliers):

Prefix   Value                     |   Prefix   Value
k        kilobyte  (10^3 = 1000)   |   Ki       kibibyte (2^10 = 1024)
M        megabyte  (10^6)          |   Mi       mebibyte (2^20)
G        gigabyte  (10^9)          |   Gi       gibibyte (2^30)
T        terabyte  (10^12)         |   Ti       tebibyte (2^40)
P        petabyte  (10^15)         |   Pi       pebibyte (2^50)
E        exabyte   (10^18)         |   Ei       exbibyte (2^60)
Z        zettabyte (10^21)         |   Zi       zebibyte (2^70)
Y        yottabyte (10^24)         |   Yi       yobibyte (2^80)


File: lzip.info,  Node: File Format,  Next: Examples,  Prev: Invoking Lzip,  Up: Top

4 File Format
*************

In the diagram below, a box like this:
+---+
|   | <-- the vertical bars might be missing
+---+

   represents one byte; a box like this:
+==============+
|              |
+==============+

   represents a variable number of bytes.


   A lzip file consists of a series of "members" (compressed data sets).
The members simply appear one after another in the file, with no
additional information before, between, or after them.

   Each member has the following structure:
+--+--+--+--+----+----+=============+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| ID string | VN | DS | Lzma stream | CRC32 |   Data size   |  Member size  |
+--+--+--+--+----+----+=============+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   All multibyte values are stored in little endian order.

`ID string'
     A four byte string, identifying the member type, with the value
     "LZIP".

`VN (version number, 1 byte)'
     Just in case something needs to be modified in the future. Valid
     values are 0 and 1. Version 0 files have only one member and lack
     `Member size'.

`DS (coded dictionary size, 1 byte)'
     Bits 4-0 contain the base 2 logarithm of the base dictionary size.
     Bits 7-5 contain the number of "wedges" to substract from the base
     dictionary size to obtain the dictionary size. The size of a wedge
     is (base dictionary size / 16).
     Valid values for dictionary size range from 4KiB to 512MiB.

`Lzma stream'
     The lzma stream, finished by an end of stream marker. Uses default
     values for encoder properties.

`CRC32 (4 bytes)'
     CRC of the uncompressed original data.

`Data size (8 bytes)'
     Size of the uncompressed original data.

`Member size (8 bytes)'
     Total size of the member, including header and trailer. This
     facilitates safe recovery of undamaged members from multimember
     files.



File: lzip.info,  Node: Examples,  Next: Lziprecover,  Prev: File Format,  Up: Top

5 A small tutorial with examples
********************************

WARNING! If your data is important, give the `--keep' option to lzip
and do not remove the original file until you verify the compressed
file with a command like `lzip -cd file.lz | cmp file -'.


Example 1: Replace a regular file with its compressed version file.lz
and show the compression ratio.

     lzip -v file


Example 2: Like example 1 but the created file.lz is multimember with a
member size of 1MiB.

     lzip -b 1MiB file


Example 3: Compress a whole floppy in /dev/fd0 and send the output to
file.lz.

     lzip -c /dev/fd0 > file.lz


Example 4: Create a multivolume compressed tar archive with a volume
size of 1440KiB.

     tar -c some_directory | lzip -S 1440KiB -o volume_name


Example 5: Extract a multivolume compressed tar archive.

     lzip -cd volume_name*.lz | tar -xf -


Example 6: Create a multivolume compressed backup of a big database file
with a volume size of 650MB, where each volume is a multimember file
with a member size of 32MiB.

     lzip -b 32MiB -S 650MB big_database


Example 7: Recover the first volume of those created in example 6 from
two copies, `big_database1_00001.lz' and `big_database2_00001.lz', with
member 00007 damaged in the first copy and member 00018 damaged in the
second copy. (Indented lines are lzip error messages).

     lziprecover big_database1_00001.lz
     lziprecover big_database2_00001.lz
     lzip -t rec*big_database1_00001.lz
       rec00007big_database1_00001.lz: crc mismatch
     lzip -t rec*big_database2_00001.lz
       rec00018big_database1_00001.lz: crc mismatch
     cp rec00007big_database2_00001.lz rec00007big_database1_00001.lz
     cat rec*big_database1_00001.lz > big_database3_00001.lz


File: lzip.info,  Node: Lziprecover,  Next: Problems,  Prev: Examples,  Up: Top

6 Lziprecover
*************

Lziprecover is a program that searches for members in .lz files, and
writes each member in its own .lz file. You can then use `lzip -t' to
test the integrity of the resulting files, and decompress those which
are undamaged.

   Lziprecover takes a single argument, the name of the damaged file,
and writes a number of files `rec00001file.lz', `rec00002file.lz', etc,
containing the extracted members. The output filenames are designed so
that the use of wildcards in subsequent processing, for example,
`lzip -dc rec*file.lz > recovered_data', processes the files in the
correct order.


File: lzip.info,  Node: Problems,  Next: Concept Index,  Prev: Lziprecover,  Up: Top

7 Reporting Bugs
****************

There are probably bugs in lzip. There are certainly errors and
omissions in this manual. If you report them, they will get fixed. If
you don't, no one will ever know about them and they will remain unfixed
for all eternity, if not longer.

   If you find a bug in lzip, please send electronic mail to
<lzip-bug@nongnu.org>. Include the version number, which you can find
by running `lzip --version'.


File: lzip.info,  Node: Concept Index,  Prev: Problems,  Up: Top

Concept Index
*************

[index]
* Menu:

* algorithm:                             Algorithm.             (line 6)
* bugs:                                  Problems.              (line 6)
* examples:                              Examples.              (line 6)
* file format:                           File Format.           (line 6)
* getting help:                          Problems.              (line 6)
* introduction:                          Introduction.          (line 6)
* invoking:                              Invoking Lzip.         (line 6)
* lziprecover:                           Lziprecover.           (line 6)
* options:                               Invoking Lzip.         (line 6)
* usage:                                 Invoking Lzip.         (line 6)
* version:                               Invoking Lzip.         (line 6)



Tag Table:
Node: Top224
Node: Introduction899
Node: Algorithm4206
Node: Invoking Lzip6432
Node: File Format10779
Node: Examples12733
Node: Lziprecover14571
Node: Problems15270
Node: Concept Index15795

End Tag Table