This is plzip.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.13 from plzip.texinfo. INFO-DIR-SECTION Data Compression START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY * Plzip: (plzip). Parallel compressor compatible with lzip END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY  File: plzip.info, Node: Top, Next: Introduction, Up: (dir) Plzip Manual ************ This manual is for Plzip (version 0.6, 20 March 2010). * Menu: * Introduction:: Purpose and features of plzip * Invoking Plzip:: Command line interface * Program Design:: Internal structure of plzip * File Format:: Detailed format of the compressed file * Problems:: Reporting bugs * Concept Index:: Index of concepts Copyright (C) 2009, 2010 Antonio Diaz Diaz. This manual is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to copy, distribute and modify it.  File: plzip.info, Node: Introduction, Next: Invoking Plzip, Prev: Top, Up: Top 1 Introduction ************** Plzip is a massively parallel (multi-threaded), 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. Plzip uses the lzip file format; the files produced by plzip are fully compatible with lzip-1.4 or newer. Plzip is intended for faster compression/decompression of big files on multiprocessor machines, which makes it specially well suited for distribution of big software files and large scale data archiving. On files big enough, plzip can use hundreds of processors. Plzip 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. Plzip is able to read from some types of non regular files if the `--stdout' option is specified. If no file names are specified, plzip compresses (or decompresses) from standard input to standard output. In this case, plzip will decline to write compressed output to a terminal, as this would be entirely incomprehensible and therefore pointless. Plzip 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. When decompressing, plzip 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, plzip 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 plzip (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 plzip to panic.  File: plzip.info, Node: Invoking Plzip, Next: Program Design, Prev: Introduction, Up: Top 2 Invoking Plzip **************** The format for running plzip is: plzip [OPTIONS] [FILES] Plzip supports the following options: `--help' `-h' Print an informative help message describing the options and exit. `--version' `-V' Print the version number of plzip on the standard output and exit. `--data-size=SIZE' `-B' Set the input data block size in bytes. The input file will be divided in chunks of this size before compression is performed. Valid values range from 8KiB to 1GiB. Default value is two times the dictionary size. Plzip will reduce the dictionary size if it is larger than the chosen data size. `--stdout' `-c' Compress or decompress to standard output. Needed when reading from a named pipe (fifo) or from a device. `--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. `--threads=THREADS' `-n THREADS' Set the number of worker threads. Valid values range from 1 to "as many as your system can support". If this option is not used, plzip tries to detect the number of processors in the system and use it as default value. `--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, and a file named `FILE.lz' when compressing. `--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. Note that dictionary sizes are quantized. If the specified size does not match one of the valid sizes, it will be rounded upwards. `--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 1 MiB 10 bytes -2 1.5 MiB 12 bytes -3 2 MiB 17 bytes -4 3 MiB 26 bytes -5 4 MiB 44 bytes -6 8 MiB 80 bytes -7 16 MiB 108 bytes -8 24 MiB 163 bytes -9 32 MiB 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: plzip.info, Node: Program Design, Next: File Format, Prev: Invoking Plzip, Up: Top 3 Program Design **************** For each input file, a splitter thread and several worker threads are created, acting the main thread as muxer (multiplexer) thread. A "packet courier" takes care of data transfers among threads and limits the maximum number of data blocks (packets) being processed simultaneously. The splitter reads data blocks from the input file, and distributes them to the workers. The workers (de)compress the blocks received from the splitter. The muxer collects processed packets from the workers, and writes them to the output file.  File: plzip.info, Node: File Format, Next: Problems, Prev: Program Design, 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: plzip.info, Node: Problems, Next: Concept Index, Prev: File Format, Up: Top 5 Reporting Bugs **************** There are probably bugs in plzip. 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 plzip, please send electronic mail to . Include the version number, which you can find by running `plzip --version'.  File: plzip.info, Node: Concept Index, Prev: Problems, Up: Top Concept Index ************* [index] * Menu: * bugs: Problems. (line 6) * file format: File Format. (line 6) * getting help: Problems. (line 6) * introduction: Introduction. (line 6) * invoking: Invoking Plzip. (line 6) * options: Invoking Plzip. (line 6) * program design: Program Design. (line 6) * usage: Invoking Plzip. (line 6) * version: Invoking Plzip. (line 6)  Tag Table: Node: Top223 Node: Introduction791 Node: Invoking Plzip3533 Node: Program Design7499 Node: File Format8161 Node: Problems10117 Node: Concept Index10646  End Tag Table