Manual: lzma
XZ(1) XZ Utils XZ(1)
NAME
xz, unxz, xzcat, lzma, unlzma, lzcat - Compress or decompress .xz and .lzma files
SYNOPSIS
xz [option...] [file...]
COMMAND ALIASES
unxz is equivalent to xz --decompress.
xzcat is equivalent to xz --decompress --stdout.
lzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma.
unlzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress.
lzcat is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress --stdout.
When writing scripts that need to decompress files, it is recommended to always use the name xz with
appropriate arguments (xz -d or xz -dc) instead of the names unxz and xzcat.
DESCRIPTION
xz is a general-purpose data compression tool with command line syntax similar to gzip(1) and
bzip2(1). The native file format is the .xz format, but the legacy .lzma format used by LZMA Utils
and raw compressed streams with no container format headers are also supported. In addition, decomā
pression of the .lz format used by lzip is supported.
xz compresses or decompresses each file according to the selected operation mode. If no files are
given or file is -, xz reads from standard input and writes the processed data to standard output.
xz will refuse (display an error and skip the file) to write compressed data to standard output if it
is a terminal. Similarly, xz will refuse to read compressed data from standard input if it is a terā
minal.
Unless --stdout is specified, files other than - are written to a new file whose name is derived from
the source file name:
ā¢ When compressing, the suffix of the target file format (.xz or .lzma) is appended to the source
filename to get the target filename.
ā¢ When decompressing, the .xz, .lzma, or .lz suffix is removed from the filename to get the target
filename. xz also recognizes the suffixes .txz and .tlz, and replaces them with the .tar suffix.
If the target file already exists, an error is displayed and the file is skipped.
Unless writing to standard output, xz will display a warning and skip the file if any of the followā
ing applies:
ā¢ File is not a regular file. Symbolic links are not followed, and thus they are not considered to
be regular files.
ā¢ File has more than one hard link.
ā¢ File has setuid, setgid, or sticky bit set.
ā¢ The operation mode is set to compress and the file already has a suffix of the target file format
(.xz or .txz when compressing to the .xz format, and .lzma or .tlz when compressing to the .lzma
format).
ā¢ The operation mode is set to decompress and the file doesn't have a suffix of any of the supported
file formats (.xz, .txz, .lzma, .tlz, or .lz).
After successfully compressing or decompressing the file, xz copies the owner, group, permissions,
access time, and modification time from the source file to the target file. If copying the group
fails, the permissions are modified so that the target file doesn't become accessible to users who
didn't have permission to access the source file. xz doesn't support copying other metadata like acā
cess control lists or extended attributes yet.
Once the target file has been successfully closed, the source file is removed unless --keep was specā
ified. The source file is never removed if the output is written to standard output or if an error
occurs.
Sending SIGINFO or SIGUSR1 to the xz process makes it print progress information to standard error.
This has only limited use since when standard error is a terminal, using --verbose will display an
automatically updating progress indicator.
Memory usage
The memory usage of xz varies from a few hundred kilobytes to several gigabytes depending on the comā
pression settings. The settings used when compressing a file determine the memory requirements of
the decompressor. Typically the decompressor needs 5 % to 20 % of the amount of memory that the comā
pressor needed when creating the file. For example, decompressing a file created with xz -9 curā
rently requires 65 MiB of memory. Still, it is possible to have .xz files that require several gigaā
bytes of memory to decompress.
Especially users of older systems may find the possibility of very large memory usage annoying. To
prevent uncomfortable surprises, xz has a built-in memory usage limiter, which is disabled by deā
fault. While some operating systems provide ways to limit the memory usage of processes, relying on
it wasn't deemed to be flexible enough (for example, using ulimit(1) to limit virtual memory tends to
cripple mmap(2)).
The memory usage limiter can be enabled with the command line option --memlimit=limit. Often it is
more convenient to enable the limiter by default by setting the environment variable XZ_DEFAULTS, for
example, XZ_DEFAULTS=--memlimit=150MiB. It is possible to set the limits separately for compression
and decompression by using --memlimit-compress=limit and --memlimit-decompress=limit. Using these
two options outside XZ_DEFAULTS is rarely useful because a single run of xz cannot do both compresā
sion and decompression and --memlimit=limit (or -M limit) is shorter to type on the command line.
If the specified memory usage limit is exceeded when decompressing, xz will display an error and deā
compressing the file will fail. If the limit is exceeded when compressing, xz will try to scale the
settings down so that the limit is no longer exceeded (except when using --format=raw or --no-adā
just). This way the operation won't fail unless the limit is very small. The scaling of the setā
tings is done in steps that don't match the compression level presets, for example, if the limit is
only slightly less than the amount required for xz -9, the settings will be scaled down only a litā
tle, not all the way down to xz -8.
Concatenation and padding with .xz files
It is possible to concatenate .xz files as is. xz will decompress such files as if they were a sinā
gle .xz file.
It is possible to insert padding between the concatenated parts or after the last part. The padding
must consist of null bytes and the size of the padding must be a multiple of four bytes. This can be
useful, for example, if the .xz file is stored on a medium that measures file sizes in 512-byte
blocks.
Concatenation and padding are not allowed with .lzma files or raw streams.
OPTIONS
Integer suffixes and special values
In most places where an integer argument is expected, an optional suffix is supported to easily indiā
cate large integers. There must be no space between the integer and the suffix.
KiB Multiply the integer by 1,024 (2^10). Ki, k, kB, K, and KB are accepted as synonyms for KiB.
MiB Multiply the integer by 1,048,576 (2^20). Mi, m, M, and MB are accepted as synonyms for MiB.
GiB Multiply the integer by 1,073,741,824 (2^30). Gi, g, G, and GB are accepted as synonyms for
GiB.
The special value max can be used to indicate the maximum integer value supported by the option.
Operation mode
If multiple operation mode options are given, the last one takes effect.
-z, --compress
Compress. This is the default operation mode when no operation mode option is specified and
no other operation mode is implied from the command name (for example, unxz implies --decomā
press).
After successful compression, the source file is removed unless writing to standard output or
--keep was specified.
-d, --decompress, --uncompress
Decompress. After successful decompression, the source file is removed unless writing to
standard output or --keep was specified.
-t, --test
Test the integrity of compressed files. This option is equivalent to --decompress --stdout
except that the decompressed data is discarded instead of being written to standard output.
No files are created or removed.
-l, --list
Print information about compressed files. No uncompressed output is produced, and no files
are created or removed. In list mode, the program cannot read the compressed data from stanā
dard input or from other unseekable sources.
The default listing shows basic information about files, one file per line. To get more deā
tailed information, use also the --verbose option. For even more information, use --verbose
twice, but note that this may be slow, because getting all the extra information requires many
seeks. The width of verbose output exceeds 80 characters, so piping the output to, for examā
ple, less -S may be convenient if the terminal isn't wide enough.
The exact output may vary between xz versions and different locales. For machine-readable
output, --robot --list should be used.
Operation modifiers
-k, --keep
Don't delete the input files.
Since xz 5.2.6, this option also makes xz compress or decompress even if the input is a symā
bolic link to a regular file, has more than one hard link, or has the setuid, setgid, or
sticky bit set. The setuid, setgid, and sticky bits are not copied to the target file. In
earlier versions this was only done with --force.
-f, --force
This option has several effects:
ā¢ If the target file already exists, delete it before compressing or decompressing.
ā¢ Compress or decompress even if the input is a symbolic link to a regular file, has more
than one hard link, or has the setuid, setgid, or sticky bit set. The setuid, setgid, and
sticky bits are not copied to the target file.
ā¢ When used with --decompress --stdout and xz cannot recognize the type of the source file,
copy the source file as is to standard output. This allows xzcat --force to be used like
cat(1) for files that have not been compressed with xz. Note that in future, xz might supā
port new compressed file formats, which may make xz decompress more types of files instead
of copying them as is to standard output. --format=format can be used to restrict xz to
decompress only a single file format.
-c, --stdout, --to-stdout
Write the compressed or decompressed data to standard output instead of a file. This implies
--keep.
--single-stream
Decompress only the first .xz stream, and silently ignore possible remaining input data folā
lowing the stream. Normally such trailing garbage makes xz display an error.
xz never decompresses more than one stream from .lzma files or raw streams, but this option
still makes xz ignore the possible trailing data after the .lzma file or raw stream.
This option has no effect if the operation mode is not --decompress or --test.
Since xz 5.7.1alpha, --single-stream implies --keep.
--no-sparse
Disable creation of sparse files. By default, if decompressing into a regular file, xz tries
to make the file sparse if the decompressed data contains long sequences of binary zeros. It
also works when writing to standard output as long as standard output is connected to a reguā
lar file and certain additional conditions are met to make it safe. Creating sparse files may
save disk space and speed up the decompression by reducing the amount of disk I/O.
-S .suf, --suffix=.suf
When compressing, use .suf as the suffix for the target file instead of .xz or .lzma. If not
writing to standard output and the source file already has the suffix .suf, a warning is disā
played and the file is skipped.
When decompressing, recognize files with the suffix .suf in addition to files with the .xz,
.txz, .lzma, .tlz, or .lz suffix. If the source file has the suffix .suf, the suffix is reā
moved to get the target filename.
When compressing or decompressing raw streams (--format=raw), the suffix must always be speciā
fied unless writing to standard output, because there is no default suffix for raw streams.
--files[=file]
Read the filenames to process from file; if file is omitted, filenames are read from standard
input. Filenames must be terminated with the newline character. A dash (-) is taken as a
regular filename; it doesn't mean standard input. If filenames are given also as command line
arguments, they are processed before the filenames read from file.
--files0[=file]
This is identical to --files[=file] except that each filename must be terminated with the null
character.
Basic file format and compression options
-F format, --format=format
Specify the file format to compress or decompress:
auto This is the default. When compressing, auto is equivalent to xz. When decompressing,
the format of the input file is automatically detected. Note that raw streams (created
with --format=raw) cannot be auto-detected.
xz Compress to the .xz file format, or accept only .xz files when decompressing.
lzma, alone
Compress to the legacy .lzma file format, or accept only .lzma files when decompressā
ing. The alternative name alone is provided for backwards compatibility with LZMA
Utils.
lzip Accept only .lz files when decompressing. Compression is not supported.
The .lz format versions 0 and 1 are supported. Version 0 files were produced by lzip
1.3 and older. Such files aren't common but may be found from file archives as a few
source packages were released in this format. People might have old personal files in
this format too. Decompression support for the format version 0 was removed in lzip
1.18. lzip 1.4 and later create files in the format version 1.
raw Compress or uncompress a raw stream (no headers). This is meant for advanced users
only. To decode raw streams, you need use --format=raw and explicitly specify the filā
ter chain, which normally would have been stored in the container headers.
-C check, --check=check
Specify the type of the integrity check. The check is calculated from the uncompressed data
and stored in the .xz file. This option has an effect only when compressing into the .xz forā
mat; the .lzma format doesn't support integrity checks. The integrity check (if any) is veriā
fied when the .xz file is decompressed.
Supported check types:
none Don't calculate an integrity check at all. This is usually a bad idea. This can be
useful when integrity of the data is verified by other means anyway.
crc32 Calculate CRC32 using the polynomial from IEEE-802.3 (Ethernet).
crc64 Calculate CRC64 using the polynomial from ECMA-182. This is the default, since it is
slightly better than CRC32 at detecting damaged files and the speed difference is negā
ligible.
sha256 Calculate SHA-256. This is somewhat slower than CRC32 and CRC64.
Integrity of the .xz headers is always verified with CRC32. It is not possible to change or
disable it.
--ignore-check
Don't verify the integrity check of the compressed data when decompressing. The CRC32 values
in the .xz headers will still be verified normally.
Do not use this option unless you know what you are doing. Possible reasons to use this opā
tion:
ā¢ Trying to recover data from a corrupt .xz file.
ā¢ Speeding up decompression. This matters mostly with SHA-256 or with files that have comā
pressed extremely well. It's recommended to not use this option for this purpose unless
the file integrity is verified externally in some other way.
-0 ... -9
Select a compression preset level. The default is -6. If multiple preset levels are speciā
fied, the last one takes effect. If a custom filter chain was already specified, setting a
compression preset level clears the custom filter chain.
The differences between the presets are more significant than with gzip(1) and bzip2(1). The
selected compression settings determine the memory requirements of the decompressor, thus usā
ing a too high preset level might make it painful to decompress the file on an old system with
little RAM. Specifically, it's not a good idea to blindly use -9 for everything like it often
is with gzip(1) and bzip2(1).
-0 ... -3
These are somewhat fast presets. -0 is sometimes faster than gzip -9 while compressing
much better. The higher ones often have speed comparable to bzip2(1) with comparable
or better compression ratio, although the results depend a lot on the type of data beā
ing compressed.
-4 ... -6
Good to very good compression while keeping decompressor memory usage reasonable even
for old systems. -6 is the default, which is usually a good choice for distributing
files that need to be decompressible even on systems with only 16 MiB RAM. (-5e or -6e
may be worth considering too. See --extreme.)
-7 ... -9
These are like -6 but with higher compressor and decompressor memory requirements.
These are useful only when compressing files bigger than 8 MiB, 16 MiB, and 32 MiB, reā
spectively.
On the same hardware, the decompression speed is approximately a constant number of bytes of
compressed data per second. In other words, the better the compression, the faster the decomā
pression will usually be. This also means that the amount of uncompressed output produced per
second can vary a lot.
The following table summarises the features of the presets:
Preset DictSize CompCPU CompMem DecMem
-0 256 KiB 0 3 MiB 1 MiB
-1 1 MiB 1 9 MiB 2 MiB
-2 2 MiB 2 17 MiB 3 MiB
-3 4 MiB 3 32 MiB 5 MiB
-4 4 MiB 4 48 MiB 5 MiB
-5 8 MiB 5 94 MiB 9 MiB
-6 8 MiB 6 94 MiB 9 MiB
-7 16 MiB 6 186 MiB 17 MiB
-8 32 MiB 6 370 MiB 33 MiB
-9 64 MiB 6 674 MiB 65 MiB
Column descriptions:
ā¢ DictSize is the LZMA2 dictionary size. It is waste of memory to use a dictionary bigger
than the size of the uncompressed file. This is why it is good to avoid using the presets
-7 ... -9 when there's no real need for them. At -6 and lower, the amount of memory wasted
is usually low enough to not matter.
ā¢ CompCPU is a simplified representation of the LZMA2 settings that affect compression speed.
The dictionary size affects speed too, so while CompCPU is the same for levels -6 ... -9,
higher levels still tend to be a little slower. To get even slower and thus possibly betā
ter compression, see --extreme.
ā¢ CompMem contains the compressor memory requirements in the single-threaded mode. It may
vary slightly between xz versions.
ā¢ DecMem contains the decompressor memory requirements. That is, the compression settings
determine the memory requirements of the decompressor. The exact decompressor memory usage
is slightly more than the LZMA2 dictionary size, but the values in the table have been
rounded up to the next full MiB.
Memory requirements of the multi-threaded mode are significantly higher than that of the sinā
gle-threaded mode. With the default value of --block-size, each thread needs 3*3*DictSize
plus CompMem or DecMem. For example, four threads with preset -6 needs 660ā670 MiB of memory.
-e, --extreme
Use a slower variant of the selected compression preset level (-0 ... -9) to hopefully get a
little bit better compression ratio, but with bad luck this can also make it worse. Decomā
pressor memory usage is not affected, but compressor memory usage increases a little at preset
levels -0 ... -3.
Since there are two presets with dictionary sizes 4 MiB and 8 MiB, the presets -3e and -5e use
slightly faster settings (lower CompCPU) than -4e and -6e, respectively. That way no two preā
sets are identical.
Preset DictSize CompCPU CompMem DecMem
-0e 256 KiB 8 4 MiB 1 MiB
-1e 1 MiB 8 13 MiB 2 MiB
-2e 2 MiB 8 25 MiB 3 MiB
-3e 4 MiB 7 48 MiB 5 MiB
-4e 4 MiB 8 48 MiB 5 MiB
-5e 8 MiB 7 94 MiB 9 MiB
-6e 8 MiB 8 94 MiB 9 MiB
-7e 16 MiB 8 186 MiB 17 MiB
-8e 32 MiB 8 370 MiB 33 MiB
-9e 64 MiB 8 674 MiB 65 MiB
For example, there are a total of four presets that use 8 MiB dictionary, whose order from the
fastest to the slowest is -5, -6, -5e, and -6e.
--fast
--best These are somewhat misleading aliases for -0 and -9, respectively. These are provided only
for backwards compatibility with LZMA Utils. Avoid using these options.
--block-size=size
When compressing to the .xz format, split the input data into blocks of size bytes. The
blocks are compressed independently from each other, which helps with multi-threading and
makes limited random-access decompression possible. This option is typically used to override
the default block size in multi-threaded mode, but this option can be used in single-threaded
mode too.
In multi-threaded mode about three times size bytes will be allocated in each thread for
buffering input and output. The default size is three times the LZMA2 dictionary size or 1
MiB, whichever is more. Typically a good value is 2ā4 times the size of the LZMA2 dictionary
or at least 1 MiB. Using size less than the LZMA2 dictionary size is waste of RAM because
then the LZMA2 dictionary buffer will never get fully used. In multi-threaded mode, the sizes
of the blocks are stored in the block headers. This size information is required for multi-
threaded decompression.
In single-threaded mode no block splitting is done by default. Setting this option doesn't
affect memory usage. No size information is stored in block headers, thus files created in
single-threaded mode won't be identical to files created in multi-threaded mode. The lack of
size information also means that xz won't be able decompress the files in multi-threaded mode.
--block-list=items
When compressing to the .xz format, start a new block with an optional custom filter chain afā
ter the given intervals of uncompressed data.
The items are a comma-separated list. Each item consists of an optional filter chain number
between 0 and 9 followed by a colon (:) and a required size of uncompressed data. Omitting an
item (two or more consecutive commas) is a shorthand to use the size and filters of the previā
ous item.
If the input file is bigger than the sum of the sizes in items, the last item is repeated unā
til the end of the file. A special value of 0 may be used as the last size to indicate that
the rest of the file should be encoded as a single block.
An alternative filter chain for each block can be specified in combination with the --filā
ters1=filters ... --filters9=filters options. These options define filter chains with an
identifier between 1ā9. Filter chain 0 can be used to refer to the default filter chain,
which is the same as not specifying a filter chain. The filter chain identifier can be used
before the uncompressed size, followed by a colon (:). For example, if one specifies
--block-list=1:2MiB,3:2MiB,2:4MiB,,2MiB,0:4MiB then blocks will be created using:
ā¢ The filter chain specified by --filters1 and 2 MiB input
ā¢ The filter chain specified by --filters3 and 2 MiB input
ā¢ The filter chain specified by --filters2 and 4 MiB input
ā¢ The filter chain specified by --filters2 and 4 MiB input
ā¢ The default filter chain and 2 MiB input
ā¢ The default filter chain and 4 MiB input for every block until end of input.
If one specifies a size that exceeds the encoder's block size (either the default value in
threaded mode or the value specified with --block-size=size), the encoder will create addiā
tional blocks while keeping the boundaries specified in items. For example, if one specifies
--block-size=10MiB --block-list=5MiB,10MiB,8MiB,12MiB,24MiB and the input file is 80 MiB, one
will get 11 blocks: 5, 10, 8, 10, 2, 10, 10, 4, 10, 10, and 1 MiB.
In multi-threaded mode the sizes of the blocks are stored in the block headers. This isn't
done in single-threaded mode, so the encoded output won't be identical to that of the multi-
threaded mode.
--flush-timeout=timeout
When compressing, if more than timeout milliseconds (a positive integer) has passed since the
previous flush and reading more input would block, all the pending input data is flushed from
the encoder and made available in the output stream. This can be useful if xz is used to comā
press data that is streamed over a network. Small timeout values make the data available at
the receiving end with a small delay, but large timeout values give better compression ratio.
This feature is disabled by default. If this option is specified more than once, the last one
takes effect. The special timeout value of 0 can be used to explicitly disable this feature.
This feature is not available on non-POSIX systems.
This feature is still experimental. Currently xz is unsuitable for decompressing the stream
in real time due to how xz does buffering.
--no-sync
Do not synchronize the target file and its directory to the storage device before removing the
source file. This can improve performance if compressing or decompressing many small files.
However, if the system crashes soon after the deletion, it is possible that the target file
was not written to the storage device but the delete operation was. In that case neither the
original source file nor the target file is available.
This option has an effect only when xz is going to remove the source file. In other cases
synchronization is never done.
The synchronization and --no-sync were added in xz 5.7.1alpha.
--memlimit-compress=limit
Set a memory usage limit for compression. If this option is specified multiple times, the
last one takes effect.
If the compression settings exceed the limit, xz will attempt to adjust the settings downwards
so that the limit is no longer exceeded and display a notice that automatic adjustment was
done. The adjustments are done in this order: reducing the number of threads, switching to
single-threaded mode if even one thread in multi-threaded mode exceeds the limit, and finally
reducing the LZMA2 dictionary size.
When compressing with --format=raw or if --no-adjust has been specified, only the number of
threads may be reduced since it can be done without affecting the compressed output.
If the limit cannot be met even with the adjustments described above, an error is displayed
and xz will exit with exit status 1.
The limit can be specified in multiple ways:
ā¢ The limit can be an absolute value in bytes. Using an integer suffix like MiB can be useā
ful. Example: --memlimit-compress=80MiB
ā¢ The limit can be specified as a percentage of total physical memory (RAM). This can be
useful especially when setting the XZ_DEFAULTS environment variable in a shell initializaā
tion script that is shared between different computers. That way the limit is automatiā
cally bigger on systems with more memory. Example: --memlimit-compress=70%
ā¢ The limit can be reset back to its default value by setting it to 0. This is currently
equivalent to setting the limit to max (no memory usage limit).
For 32-bit xz there is a special case: if the limit would be over 4020 MiB, the limit is set
to 4020 MiB. On MIPS32 2000 MiB is used instead. (The values 0 and max aren't affected by
this. A similar feature doesn't exist for decompression.) This can be helpful when a 32-bit
executable has access to 4 GiB address space (2 GiB on MIPS32) while hopefully doing no harm
in other situations.
See also the section Memory usage.
--memlimit-decompress=limit
Set a memory usage limit for decompression. This also affects the --list mode. If the operaā
tion is not possible without exceeding the limit, xz will display an error and decompressing
the file will fail. See --memlimit-compress=limit for possible ways to specify the limit.
--memlimit-mt-decompress=limit
Set a memory usage limit for multi-threaded decompression. This can only affect the number of
threads; this will never make xz refuse to decompress a file. If limit is too low to allow
any multi-threading, the limit is ignored and xz will continue in single-threaded mode. Note
that if also --memlimit-decompress is used, it will always apply to both single-threaded and
multi-threaded modes, and so the effective limit for multi-threading will never be higher than
the limit set with --memlimit-decompress.
In contrast to the other memory usage limit options, --memlimit-mt-decompress=limit has a sysā
tem-specific default limit. xz --info-memory can be used to see the current value.
This option and its default value exist because without any limit the threaded decompressor
could end up allocating an insane amount of memory with some input files. If the default
limit is too low on your system, feel free to increase the limit but never set it to a value
larger than the amount of usable RAM as with appropriate input files xz will attempt to use
that amount of memory even with a low number of threads. Running out of memory or swapping
will not improve decompression performance.
See --memlimit-compress=limit for possible ways to specify the limit. Setting limit to 0 reā
sets the limit to the default system-specific value.
-M limit, --memlimit=limit, --memory=limit
This is equivalent to specifying --memlimit-compress=limit --memlimit-decompress=limit --memā
limit-mt-decompress=limit.
--no-adjust
Display an error and exit if the memory usage limit cannot be met without adjusting settings
that affect the compressed output. That is, this prevents xz from switching the encoder from
multi-threaded mode to single-threaded mode and from reducing the LZMA2 dictionary size. Even
when this option is used the number of threads may be reduced to meet the memory usage limit
as that won't affect the compressed output.
Automatic adjusting is always disabled when creating raw streams (--format=raw).
-T threads, --threads=threads
Specify the number of worker threads to use. Setting threads to a special value 0 makes xz
use up to as many threads as the processor(s) on the system support. The actual number of
threads can be fewer than threads if the input file is not big enough for threading with the
given settings or if using more threads would exceed the memory usage limit.
The single-threaded and multi-threaded compressors produce different output. Single-threaded
compressor will give the smallest file size but only the output from the multi-threaded comā
pressor can be decompressed using multiple threads. Setting threads to 1 will use the single-
threaded mode. Setting threads to any other value, including 0, will use the multi-threaded
compressor even if the system supports only one hardware thread. (xz 5.2.x used single-
threaded mode in this situation.)
To use multi-threaded mode with only one thread, set threads to +1. The + prefix has no efā
fect with values other than 1. A memory usage limit can still make xz switch to single-
threaded mode unless --no-adjust is used. Support for the + prefix was added in xz 5.4.0.
If an automatic number of threads has been requested and no memory usage limit has been speciā
fied, then a system-specific default soft limit will be used to possibly limit the number of
threads. It is a soft limit in sense that it is ignored if the number of threads becomes one,
thus a soft limit will never stop xz from compressing or decompressing. This default soft
limit will not make xz switch from multi-threaded mode to single-threaded mode. The active
limits can be seen with xz --info-memory.
Currently the only threading method is to split the input into blocks and compress them indeā
pendently from each other. The default block size depends on the compression level and can be
overridden with the --block-size=size option.
Threaded decompression only works on files that contain multiple blocks with size information
in block headers. All large enough files compressed in multi-threaded mode meet this condiā
tion, but files compressed in single-threaded mode don't even if --block-size=size has been
used.
The default value for threads is 0. In xz 5.4.x and older the default is 1.
Custom compressor filter chains
A custom filter chain allows specifying the compression settings in detail instead of relying on the
settings associated to the presets. When a custom filter chain is specified, preset options (-0 ...
-9 and --extreme) earlier on the command line are forgotten. If a preset option is specified after
one or more custom filter chain options, the new preset takes effect and the custom filter chain opā
tions specified earlier are forgotten.
A filter chain is comparable to piping on the command line. When compressing, the uncompressed input
goes to the first filter, whose output goes to the next filter (if any). The output of the last filā
ter gets written to the compressed file. The maximum number of filters in the chain is four, but
typically a filter chain has only one or two filters.
Many filters have limitations on where they can be in the filter chain: some filters can work only as
the last filter in the chain, some only as a non-last filter, and some work in any position in the
chain. Depending on the filter, this limitation is either inherent to the filter design or exists to
prevent security issues.
A custom filter chain can be specified in two different ways. The options --filters=filters and
--filters1=filters ... --filters9=filters allow specifying an entire filter chain in one option using
the liblzma filter string syntax. Alternatively, a filter chain can be specified by using one or
more individual filter options in the order they are wanted in the filter chain. That is, the order
of the individual filter options is significant! When decoding raw streams (--format=raw), the filā
ter chain must be specified in the same order as it was specified when compressing. Any individual
filter or preset options specified before the full chain option (--filters=filters) will be forgotā
ten. Individual filters specified after the full chain option will reset the filter chain.
Both the full and individual filter options take filter-specific options as a comma-separated list.
Extra commas in options are ignored. Every option has a default value, so specify those you want to
change.
To see the whole filter chain and options, use xz -vv (that is, use --verbose twice). This works
also for viewing the filter chain options used by presets.
--filters=filters
Specify the full filter chain or a preset in a single option. Each filter can be separated by
spaces or two dashes (--). filters may need to be quoted on the shell command line so it is
parsed as a single option. To denote options, use : or =. A preset can be prefixed with a -
and followed with zero or more flags. The only supported flag is e to apply the same options
as --extreme.
--filters1=filters ... --filters9=filters
Specify up to nine additional filter chains that can be used with --block-list.
For example, when compressing an archive with executable files followed by text files, the exā
ecutable part could use a filter chain with a BCJ filter and the text part only the LZMA2 filā
ter.
--filters-help
Display a help message describing how to specify presets and custom filter chains in the
--filters and --filters1=filters ... --filters9=filters options, and exit successfully.
--lzma1[=options]
--lzma2[=options]
Add LZMA1 or LZMA2 filter to the filter chain. These filters can be used only as the last
filter in the chain.
LZMA1 is a legacy filter, which is supported almost solely due to the legacy .lzma file forā
mat, which supports only LZMA1. LZMA2 is an updated version of LZMA1 to fix some practical
issues of LZMA1. The .xz format uses LZMA2 and doesn't support LZMA1 at all. Compression
speed and ratios of LZMA1 and LZMA2 are practically the same.
LZMA1 and LZMA2 share the same set of options:
preset=preset
Reset all LZMA1 or LZMA2 options to preset. Preset consist of an integer, which may be
followed by single-letter preset modifiers. The integer can be from 0 to 9, matching
the command line options -0 ... -9. The only supported modifier is currently e, which
matches --extreme. If no preset is specified, the default values of LZMA1 or LZMA2 opā
tions are taken from the preset 6.
dict=size
Dictionary (history buffer) size indicates how many bytes of the recently processed unā
compressed data is kept in memory. The algorithm tries to find repeating byte seā
quences (matches) in the uncompressed data, and replace them with references to the
data currently in the dictionary. The bigger the dictionary, the higher is the chance
to find a match. Thus, increasing dictionary size usually improves compression ratio,
but a dictionary bigger than the uncompressed file is waste of memory.
Typical dictionary size is from 64 KiB to 64 MiB. The minimum is 4 KiB. The maximum
for compression is currently 1.5 GiB (1536 MiB). The decompressor already supports
dictionaries up to one byte less than 4 GiB, which is the maximum for the LZMA1 and
LZMA2 stream formats.
Dictionary size and match finder (mf) together determine the memory usage of the LZMA1
or LZMA2 encoder. The same (or bigger) dictionary size is required for decompressing
that was used when compressing, thus the memory usage of the decoder is determined by
the dictionary size used when compressing. The .xz headers store the dictionary size
either as 2^n or 2^n + 2^(n-1), so these sizes are somewhat preferred for compression.
Other sizes will get rounded up when stored in the .xz headers.
lc=lc Specify the number of literal context bits. The minimum is 0 and the maximum is 4; the
default is 3. In addition, the sum of lc and lp must not exceed 4.
All bytes that cannot be encoded as matches are encoded as literals. That is, literals
are simply 8-bit bytes that are encoded one at a time.
The literal coding makes an assumption that the highest lc bits of the previous uncomā
pressed byte correlate with the next byte. For example, in typical English text, an
upper-case letter is often followed by a lower-case letter, and a lower-case letter is
usually followed by another lower-case letter. In the US-ASCII character set, the
highest three bits are 010 for upper-case letters and 011 for lower-case letters. When
lc is at least 3, the literal coding can take advantage of this property in the uncomā
pressed data.
The default value (3) is usually good. If you want maximum compression, test lc=4.
Sometimes it helps a little, and sometimes it makes compression worse. If it makes it
worse, test lc=2 too.
lp=lp Specify the number of literal position bits. The minimum is 0 and the maximum is 4;
the default is 0.
Lp affects what kind of alignment in the uncompressed data is assumed when encoding
literals. See pb below for more information about alignment.
pb=pb Specify the number of position bits. The minimum is 0 and the maximum is 4; the deā
fault is 2.
Pb affects what kind of alignment in the uncompressed data is assumed in general. The
default means four-byte alignment (2^pb=2^2=4), which is often a good choice when
there's no better guess.
When the alignment is known, setting pb accordingly may reduce the file size a little.
For example, with text files having one-byte alignment (US-ASCII, ISO-8859-*, UTF-8),
setting pb=0 can improve compression slightly. For UTF-16 text, pb=1 is a good choice.
If the alignment is an odd number like 3 bytes, pb=0 might be the best choice.
Even though the assumed alignment can be adjusted with pb and lp, LZMA1 and LZMA2 still
slightly favor 16-byte alignment. It might be worth taking into account when designing
file formats that are likely to be often compressed with LZMA1 or LZMA2.
mf=mf Match finder has a major effect on encoder speed, memory usage, and compression ratio.
Usually Hash Chain match finders are faster than Binary Tree match finders. The deā
fault depends on the preset: 0 uses hc3, 1ā3 use hc4, and the rest use bt4.
The following match finders are supported. The memory usage formulas below are rough
approximations, which are closest to the reality when dict is a power of two.
hc3 Hash Chain with 2- and 3-byte hashing
Minimum value for nice: 3
Memory usage:
dict * 7.5 (if dict <= 16 MiB);
dict * 5.5 + 64 MiB (if dict > 16 MiB)
hc4 Hash Chain with 2-, 3-, and 4-byte hashing
Minimum value for nice: 4
Memory usage:
dict * 7.5 (if dict <= 32 MiB);
dict * 6.5 (if dict > 32 MiB)
bt2 Binary Tree with 2-byte hashing
Minimum value for nice: 2
Memory usage: dict * 9.5
bt3 Binary Tree with 2- and 3-byte hashing
Minimum value for nice: 3
Memory usage:
dict * 11.5 (if dict <= 16 MiB);
dict * 9.5 + 64 MiB (if dict > 16 MiB)
bt4 Binary Tree with 2-, 3-, and 4-byte hashing
Minimum value for nice: 4
Memory usage:
dict * 11.5 (if dict <= 32 MiB);
dict * 10.5 (if dict > 32 MiB)
mode=mode
Compression mode specifies the method to analyze the data produced by the match finder.
Supported modes are fast and normal. The default is fast for presets 0ā3 and normal
for presets 4ā9.
Usually fast is used with Hash Chain match finders and normal with Binary Tree match
finders. This is also what the presets do.
nice=nice
Specify what is considered to be a nice length for a match. Once a match of at least
nice bytes is found, the algorithm stops looking for possibly better matches.
Nice can be 2ā273 bytes. Higher values tend to give better compression ratio at the
expense of speed. The default depends on the preset.
depth=depth
Specify the maximum search depth in the match finder. The default is the special value
of 0, which makes the compressor determine a reasonable depth from mf and nice.
Reasonable depth for Hash Chains is 4ā100 and 16ā1000 for Binary Trees. Using very
high values for depth can make the encoder extremely slow with some files. Avoid setā
ting the depth over 1000 unless you are prepared to interrupt the compression in case
it is taking far too long.
When decoding raw streams (--format=raw), LZMA2 needs only the dictionary size. LZMA1 needs
also lc, lp, and pb.
--x86[=options]
--arm[=options]
--armthumb[=options]
--arm64[=options]
--powerpc[=options]
--ia64[=options]
--sparc[=options]
--riscv[=options]
Add a branch/call/jump (BCJ) filter to the filter chain. These filters can be used only as a
non-last filter in the filter chain.
A BCJ filter converts relative addresses in the machine code to their absolute counterparts.
This doesn't change the size of the data but it increases redundancy, which can help LZMA2 to
produce 0ā15 % smaller .xz file. The BCJ filters are always reversible, so using a BCJ filter
for wrong type of data doesn't cause any data loss, although it may make the compression ratio
slightly worse. The BCJ filters are very fast and use an insignificant amount of memory.
These BCJ filters have known problems related to the compression ratio:
ā¢ Some types of files containing executable code (for example, object files, static liā
braries, and Linux kernel modules) have the addresses in the instructions filled with
filler values. These BCJ filters will still do the address conversion, which will make the
compression worse with these files.
ā¢ If a BCJ filter is applied on an archive, it is possible that it makes the compression raā
tio worse than not using a BCJ filter. For example, if there are similar or even identical
executables then filtering will likely make the files less similar and thus compression is
worse. The contents of non-executable files in the same archive can matter too. In pracā
tice one has to try with and without a BCJ filter to see which is better in each situation.
Different instruction sets have different alignment: the executable file must be aligned to a
multiple of this value in the input data to make the filter work.
Filter Alignment Notes
x86 1 32-bit or 64-bit x86
ARM 4
ARM-Thumb 2
ARM64 4 4096-byte alignment is best
PowerPC 4 Big endian only
IA-64 16 Itanium
SPARC 4
RISC-V 2
Since the BCJ-filtered data is usually compressed with LZMA2, the compression ratio may be imā
proved slightly if the LZMA2 options are set to match the alignment of the selected BCJ filā
ter. Examples:
ā¢ IA-64 filter has 16-byte alignment so pb=4,lp=4,lc=0 is good with LZMA2 (2^4=16).
ā¢ RISC-V code has 2-byte or 4-byte alignment depending on whether the file contains 16-bit
compressed instructions (the C extension). When 16-bit instructions are used,
pb=2,lp=1,lc=3 or pb=1,lp=1,lc=3 is good. When 16-bit instructions aren't present,
pb=2,lp=2,lc=2 is the best. readelf -h can be used to check if "RVC" appears on the
"Flags" line.
ā¢ ARM64 is always 4-byte aligned so pb=2,lp=2,lc=2 is the best.
ā¢ The x86 filter is an exception. It's usually good to stick to LZMA2's defaults
(pb=2,lp=0,lc=3) when compressing x86 executables.
All BCJ filters support the same options:
start=offset
Specify the start offset that is used when converting between relative and absolute adā
dresses. The offset must be a multiple of the alignment of the filter (see the table
above). The default is zero. In practice, the default is good; specifying a custom
offset is almost never useful.
--delta[=options]
Add the Delta filter to the filter chain. The Delta filter can be only used as a non-last
filter in the filter chain.
Currently only simple byte-wise delta calculation is supported. It can be useful when comā
pressing, for example, uncompressed bitmap images or uncompressed PCM audio. However, special
purpose algorithms may give significantly better results than Delta + LZMA2. This is true esā
pecially with audio, which compresses faster and better, for example, with flac(1).
Supported options:
dist=distance
Specify the distance of the delta calculation in bytes. distance must be 1ā256. The
default is 1.
For example, with dist=2 and eight-byte input A1 B1 A2 B3 A3 B5 A4 B7, the output will
be A1 B1 01 02 01 02 01 02.
Other options
-q, --quiet
Suppress warnings and notices. Specify this twice to suppress errors too. This option has no
effect on the exit status. That is, even if a warning was suppressed, the exit status to inā
dicate a warning is still used.
-v, --verbose
Be verbose. If standard error is connected to a terminal, xz will display a progress indicaā
tor. Specifying --verbose twice will give even more verbose output.
The progress indicator shows the following information:
ā¢ Completion percentage is shown if the size of the input file is known. That is, the perā
centage cannot be shown in pipes.
ā¢ Amount of compressed data produced (compressing) or consumed (decompressing).
ā¢ Amount of uncompressed data consumed (compressing) or produced (decompressing).
ā¢ Compression ratio, which is calculated by dividing the amount of compressed data processed
so far by the amount of uncompressed data processed so far.
ā¢ Compression or decompression speed. This is measured as the amount of uncompressed data
consumed (compression) or produced (decompression) per second. It is shown after a few
seconds have passed since xz started processing the file.
ā¢ Elapsed time in the format M:SS or H:MM:SS.
ā¢ Estimated remaining time is shown only when the size of the input file is known and a couā
ple of seconds have already passed since xz started processing the file. The time is shown
in a less precise format which never has any colons, for example, 2 min 30 s.
When standard error is not a terminal, --verbose will make xz print the filename, compressed
size, uncompressed size, compression ratio, and possibly also the speed and elapsed time on a
single line to standard error after compressing or decompressing the file. The speed and
elapsed time are included only when the operation took at least a few seconds. If the operaā
tion didn't finish, for example, due to user interruption, also the completion percentage is
printed if the size of the input file is known.
-Q, --no-warn
Don't set the exit status to 2 even if a condition worth a warning was detected. This option
doesn't affect the verbosity level, thus both --quiet and --no-warn have to be used to not
display warnings and to not alter the exit status.
--robot
Print messages in a machine-parsable format. This is intended to ease writing frontends that
want to use xz instead of liblzma, which may be the case with various scripts. The output
with this option enabled is meant to be stable across xz releases. See the section ROBOT MODE
for details.
--info-memory
Display, in human-readable format, how much physical memory (RAM) and how many processor
threads xz thinks the system has and the memory usage limits for compression and decompresā
sion, and exit successfully.
-h, --help
Display a help message describing the most commonly used options, and exit successfully.
-H, --long-help
Display a help message describing all features of xz, and exit successfully
-V, --version
Display the version number of xz and liblzma in human readable format. To get machine-
parsable output, specify --robot before --version.
ROBOT MODE
The robot mode is activated with the --robot option. It makes the output of xz easier to parse by
other programs. Currently --robot is supported only together with --list, --filters-help,
--info-memory, and --version. It will be supported for compression and decompression in the future.
List mode
xz --robot --list uses tab-separated output. The first column of every line has a string that indiā
cates the type of the information found on that line:
name This is always the first line when starting to list a file. The second column on the line is
the filename.
file This line contains overall information about the .xz file. This line is always printed after
the name line.
stream This line type is used only when --verbose was specified. There are as many stream lines as
there are streams in the .xz file.
block This line type is used only when --verbose was specified. There are as many block lines as
there are blocks in the .xz file. The block lines are shown after all the stream lines; difā
ferent line types are not interleaved.
summary
This line type is used only when --verbose was specified twice. This line is printed after
all block lines. Like the file line, the summary line contains overall information about the
.xz file.
totals This line is always the very last line of the list output. It shows the total counts and
sizes.
The columns of the file lines:
2. Number of streams in the file
3. Total number of blocks in the stream(s)
4. Compressed size of the file
5. Uncompressed size of the file
6. Compression ratio, for example, 0.123. If ratio is over 9.999, three dashes (---) are
displayed instead of the ratio.
7. Comma-separated list of integrity check names. The following strings are used for the
known check types: None, CRC32, CRC64, and SHA-256. For unknown check types, Unknown-N is
used, where N is the Check ID as a decimal number (one or two digits).
8. Total size of stream padding in the file
The columns of the stream lines:
2. Stream number (the first stream is 1)
3. Number of blocks in the stream
4. Compressed start offset
5. Uncompressed start offset
6. Compressed size (does not include stream padding)
7. Uncompressed size
8. Compression ratio
9. Name of the integrity check
10. Size of stream padding
The columns of the block lines:
2. Number of the stream containing this block
3. Block number relative to the beginning of the stream (the first block is 1)
4. Block number relative to the beginning of the file
5. Compressed start offset relative to the beginning of the file
6. Uncompressed start offset relative to the beginning of the file
7. Total compressed size of the block (includes headers)
8. Uncompressed size
9. Compression ratio
10. Name of the integrity check
If --verbose was specified twice, additional columns are included on the block lines. These are not
displayed with a single --verbose, because getting this information requires many seeks and can thus
be slow:
11. Value of the integrity check in hexadecimal
12. Block header size
13. Block flags: c indicates that compressed size is present, and u indicates that uncomā
pressed size is present. If the flag is not set, a dash (-) is shown instead to keep the
string length fixed. New flags may be added to the end of the string in the future.
14. Size of the actual compressed data in the block (this excludes the block header, block
padding, and check fields)
15. Amount of memory (in bytes) required to decompress this block with this xz version
16. Filter chain. Note that most of the options used at compression time cannot be known, beā
cause only the options that are needed for decompression are stored in the .xz headers.
The columns of the summary lines:
2. Amount of memory (in bytes) required to decompress this file with this xz version
3. yes or no indicating if all block headers have both compressed size and uncompressed size
stored in them
Since xz 5.1.2alpha:
4. Minimum xz version required to decompress the file
The columns of the totals line:
2. Number of streams
3. Number of blocks
4. Compressed size
5. Uncompressed size
6. Average compression ratio
7. Comma-separated list of integrity check names that were present in the files
8. Stream padding size
9. Number of files. This is here to keep the order of the earlier columns the same as on
file lines.
If --verbose was specified twice, additional columns are included on the totals line:
10. Maximum amount of memory (in bytes) required to decompress the files with this xz version
11. yes or no indicating if all block headers have both compressed size and uncompressed size
stored in them
Since xz 5.1.2alpha:
12. Minimum xz version required to decompress the file
Future versions may add new line types and new columns can be added to the existing line types, but
the existing columns won't be changed.
Filters help
xz --robot --filters-help prints the supported filters in the following format:
filter:option=,option=...
filter Name of the filter
option Name of a filter specific option
value Numeric value ranges appear as . String value choices are shown within < > and sepaā
rated by a | character.
Each filter is printed on its own line.
Memory limit information
xz --robot --info-memory prints a single line with multiple tab-separated columns:
1. Total amount of physical memory (RAM) in bytes.
2. Memory usage limit for compression in bytes (--memlimit-compress). A special value of 0 indiā
cates the default setting which for single-threaded mode is the same as no limit.
3. Memory usage limit for decompression in bytes (--memlimit-decompress). A special value of 0 inā
dicates the default setting which for single-threaded mode is the same as no limit.
4. Since xz 5.3.4alpha: Memory usage for multi-threaded decompression in bytes (--memlimit-mt-decomā
press). This is never zero because a system-specific default value shown in the column 5 is used
if no limit has been specified explicitly. This is also never greater than the value in the colā
umn 3 even if a larger value has been specified with --memlimit-mt-decompress.
5. Since xz 5.3.4alpha: A system-specific default memory usage limit that is used to limit the numā
ber of threads when compressing with an automatic number of threads (--threads=0) and no memory
usage limit has been specified (--memlimit-compress). This is also used as the default value for
--memlimit-mt-decompress.
6. Since xz 5.3.4alpha: Number of available processor threads.
In the future, the output of xz --robot --info-memory may have more columns, but never more than a
single line.
Version
xz --robot --version prints the version number of xz and liblzma in the following format:
XZ_VERSION=XYYYZZZS
LIBLZMA_VERSION=XYYYZZZS
X Major version.
YYY Minor version. Even numbers are stable. Odd numbers are alpha or beta versions.
ZZZ Patch level for stable releases or just a counter for development releases.
S Stability. 0 is alpha, 1 is beta, and 2 is stable. S should be always 2 when YYY is even.
XYYYZZZS are the same on both lines if xz and liblzma are from the same XZ Utils release.
Examples: 4.999.9beta is 49990091 and 5.0.0 is 50000002.
EXIT STATUS
0 All is good.
1 An error occurred.
2 Something worth a warning occurred, but no actual errors occurred.
Notices (not warnings or errors) printed on standard error don't affect the exit status.
ENVIRONMENT
xz parses space-separated lists of options from the environment variables XZ_DEFAULTS and XZ_OPT, in
this order, before parsing the options from the command line. Note that only options are parsed from
the environment variables; all non-options are silently ignored. Parsing is done with getopt_long(3)
which is used also for the command line arguments.
Warning: By setting these environment variables, one is effectively modifying programs and scripts
that run xz. Most of the time it is safe to set memory usage limits, number of threads, and compresā
sion options via the environment variables. However, some options can break scripts. An obvious exā
ample is --help which makes xz show the help text instead of compressing or decompressing a file.
More subtle examples are --quiet and --verbose. In many cases it works well to enable the progress
indicator using --verbose, but in some situations the extra messages create problems. The verbosity
level also affects the behavior of --list.
XZ_DEFAULTS
User-specific or system-wide default options. Typically this is set in a shell initialization
script to enable xz's memory usage limiter by default or set the default number of threads.
Excluding shell initialization scripts and similar special cases, scripts should never set or
unset XZ_DEFAULTS.
XZ_OPT This is for passing options to xz when it is not possible to set the options directly on the
xz command line. This is the case when xz is run by a script or tool, for example, GNU
tar(1):
XZ_OPT=-2v tar caf foo.tar.xz foo
Scripts may use XZ_OPT, for example, to set script-specific default compression options. It
is still recommended to allow users to override XZ_OPT if that is reasonable. For example, in
sh(1) scripts one may use something like this:
XZ_OPT=${XZ_OPT-"-7e"}
export XZ_OPT
LZMA UTILS COMPATIBILITY
The command line syntax of xz is practically a superset of lzma, unlzma, and lzcat as found from LZMA
Utils 4.32.x. In most cases, it is possible to replace LZMA Utils with XZ Utils without breaking exā
isting scripts. There are some incompatibilities though, which may sometimes cause problems.
Compression preset levels
The numbering of the compression level presets is not identical in xz and LZMA Utils. The most imā
portant difference is how dictionary sizes are mapped to different presets. Dictionary size is
roughly equal to the decompressor memory usage.
Level xz LZMA Utils
-0 256 KiB N/A
-1 1 MiB 64 KiB
-2 2 MiB 1 MiB
-3 4 MiB 512 KiB
-4 4 MiB 1 MiB
-5 8 MiB 2 MiB
-6 8 MiB 4 MiB
-7 16 MiB 8 MiB
-8 32 MiB 16 MiB
-9 64 MiB 32 MiB
The dictionary size differences affect the compressor memory usage too, but there are some other difā
ferences between LZMA Utils and XZ Utils, which make the difference even bigger:
Level xz LZMA Utils 4.32.x
-0 3 MiB N/A
-1 9 MiB 2 MiB
-2 17 MiB 12 MiB
-3 32 MiB 12 MiB
-4 48 MiB 16 MiB
-5 94 MiB 26 MiB
-6 94 MiB 45 MiB
-7 186 MiB 83 MiB
-8 370 MiB 159 MiB
-9 674 MiB 311 MiB
The default preset level in LZMA Utils is -7 while in XZ Utils it is -6, so both use an 8 MiB dictioā
nary by default.
Streamed vs. non-streamed .lzma files
The uncompressed size of the file can be stored in the .lzma header. LZMA Utils does that when comā
pressing regular files. The alternative is to mark that uncompressed size is unknown and use end-of-
payload marker to indicate where the decompressor should stop. LZMA Utils uses this method when unā
compressed size isn't known, which is the case, for example, in pipes.
xz supports decompressing .lzma files with or without end-of-payload marker, but all .lzma files creā
ated by xz will use end-of-payload marker and have uncompressed size marked as unknown in the .lzma
header. This may be a problem in some uncommon situations. For example, a .lzma decompressor in an
embedded device might work only with files that have known uncompressed size. If you hit this probā
lem, you need to use LZMA Utils or LZMA SDK to create .lzma files with known uncompressed size.
Unsupported .lzma files
The .lzma format allows lc values up to 8, and lp values up to 4. LZMA Utils can decompress files
with any lc and lp, but always creates files with lc=3 and lp=0. Creating files with other lc and lp
is possible with xz and with LZMA SDK.
The implementation of the LZMA1 filter in liblzma requires that the sum of lc and lp must not exceed
4. Thus, .lzma files, which exceed this limitation, cannot be decompressed with xz.
LZMA Utils creates only .lzma files which have a dictionary size of 2^n (a power of 2) but accepts
files with any dictionary size. liblzma accepts only .lzma files which have a dictionary size of 2^n
or 2^n + 2^(n-1). This is to decrease false positives when detecting .lzma files.
These limitations shouldn't be a problem in practice, since practically all .lzma files have been
compressed with settings that liblzma will accept.
Trailing garbage
When decompressing, LZMA Utils silently ignore everything after the first .lzma stream. In most sitā
uations, this is a bug. This also means that LZMA Utils don't support decompressing concatenated
.lzma files.
If there is data left after the first .lzma stream, xz considers the file to be corrupt unless --sinā
gle-stream was used. This may break obscure scripts which have assumed that trailing garbage is igā
nored.
NOTES
Compressed output may vary
The exact compressed output produced from the same uncompressed input file may vary between XZ Utils
versions even if compression options are identical. This is because the encoder can be improved
(faster or better compression) without affecting the file format. The output can vary even between
different builds of the same XZ Utils version, if different build options are used.
The above means that once --rsyncable has been implemented, the resulting files won't necessarily be
rsyncable unless both old and new files have been compressed with the same xz version. This problem
can be fixed if a part of the encoder implementation is frozen to keep rsyncable output stable across
xz versions.
Embedded .xz decompressors
Embedded .xz decompressor implementations like XZ Embedded don't necessarily support files created
with integrity check types other than none and crc32. Since the default is --check=crc64, you must
use --check=none or --check=crc32 when creating files for embedded systems.
Outside embedded systems, all .xz format decompressors support all the check types, or at least are
able to decompress the file without verifying the integrity check if the particular check is not supā
ported.
XZ Embedded supports BCJ filters, but only with the default start offset.
EXAMPLES
Basics
Compress the file foo into foo.xz using the default compression level (-6), and remove foo if comā
pression is successful:
xz foo
Decompress bar.xz into bar and don't remove bar.xz even if decompression is successful:
xz -dk bar.xz
Create baz.tar.xz with the preset -4e (-4 --extreme), which is slower than the default -6, but needs
less memory for compression and decompression (48 MiB and 5 MiB, respectively):
tar cf - baz | xz -4e > baz.tar.xz
A mix of compressed and uncompressed files can be decompressed to standard output with a single comā
mand:
xz -dcf a.txt b.txt.xz c.txt d.txt.lzma > abcd.txt
Parallel compression of many files
On GNU and *BSD, find(1) and xargs(1) can be used to parallelize compression of many files:
find . -type f \! -name '*.xz' -print0 \
| xargs -0r -P4 -n16 xz -T1
The -P option to xargs(1) sets the number of parallel xz processes. The best value for the -n option
depends on how many files there are to be compressed. If there are only a couple of files, the value
should probably be 1; with tens of thousands of files, 100 or even more may be appropriate to reduce
the number of xz processes that xargs(1) will eventually create.
The option -T1 for xz is there to force it to single-threaded mode, because xargs(1) is used to conā
trol the amount of parallelization.
Robot mode
Calculate how many bytes have been saved in total after compressing multiple files:
xz --robot --list *.xz | awk '/^totals/{print $5-$4}'
A script may want to know that it is using new enough xz. The following sh(1) script checks that the
version number of the xz tool is at least 5.0.0. This method is compatible with old beta versions,
which didn't support the --robot option:
if ! eval "$(xz --robot --version 2> /dev/null)" ||
[ "$XZ_VERSION" -lt 50000002 ]; then
echo "Your xz is too old."
fi
unset XZ_VERSION LIBLZMA_VERSION
Set a memory usage limit for decompression using XZ_OPT, but if a limit has already been set, don't
increase it:
NEWLIM=$((123 << 20)) # 123 MiB
OLDLIM=$(xz --robot --info-memory | cut -f3)
if [ $OLDLIM -eq 0 -o $OLDLIM -gt $NEWLIM ]; then
XZ_OPT="$XZ_OPT --memlimit-decompress=$NEWLIM"
export XZ_OPT
fi
Custom compressor filter chains
The simplest use for custom filter chains is customizing a LZMA2 preset. This can be useful, because
the presets cover only a subset of the potentially useful combinations of compression settings.
The CompCPU columns of the tables from the descriptions of the options -0 ... -9 and --extreme are
useful when customizing LZMA2 presets. Here are the relevant parts collected from those two tables:
Preset CompCPU
-0 0
-1 1
-2 2
-3 3
-4 4
-5 5
-6 6
-5e 7
-6e 8
If you know that a file requires somewhat big dictionary (for example, 32 MiB) to compress well, but
you want to compress it quicker than xz -8 would do, a preset with a low CompCPU value (for example,
1) can be modified to use a bigger dictionary:
xz --lzma2=preset=1,dict=32MiB foo.tar
With certain files, the above command may be faster than xz -6 while compressing significantly betā
ter. However, it must be emphasized that only some files benefit from a big dictionary while keeping
the CompCPU value low. The most obvious situation, where a big dictionary can help a lot, is an
archive containing very similar files of at least a few megabytes each. The dictionary size has to
be significantly bigger than any individual file to allow LZMA2 to take full advantage of the simiā
larities between consecutive files.
If very high compressor and decompressor memory usage is fine, and the file being compressed is at
least several hundred megabytes, it may be useful to use an even bigger dictionary than the 64 MiB
that xz -9 would use:
xz -vv --lzma2=dict=192MiB big_foo.tar
Using -vv (--verbose --verbose) like in the above example can be useful to see the memory requireā
ments of the compressor and decompressor. Remember that using a dictionary bigger than the size of
the uncompressed file is waste of memory, so the above command isn't useful for small files.
Sometimes the compression time doesn't matter, but the decompressor memory usage has to be kept low,
for example, to make it possible to decompress the file on an embedded system. The following command
uses -6e (-6 --extreme) as a base and sets the dictionary to only 64 KiB. The resulting file can be
decompressed with XZ Embedded (that's why there is --check=crc32) using about 100 KiB of memory.
xz --check=crc32 --lzma2=preset=6e,dict=64KiB foo
If you want to squeeze out as many bytes as possible, adjusting the number of literal context bits
(lc) and number of position bits (pb) can sometimes help. Adjusting the number of literal position
bits (lp) might help too, but usually lc and pb are more important. For example, a source code
archive contains mostly US-ASCII text, so something like the following might give slightly (like
0.1 %) smaller file than xz -6e (try also without lc=4):
xz --lzma2=preset=6e,pb=0,lc=4 source_code.tar
Using another filter together with LZMA2 can improve compression with certain file types. For examā
ple, to compress a x86-32 or x86-64 shared library using the x86 BCJ filter:
xz --x86 --lzma2 libfoo.so
Note that the order of the filter options is significant. If --x86 is specified after --lzma2, xz
will give an error, because there cannot be any filter after LZMA2, and also because the x86 BCJ filā
ter cannot be used as the last filter in the chain.
The Delta filter together with LZMA2 can give good results with bitmap images. It should usually
beat PNG, which has a few more advanced filters than simple delta but uses Deflate for the actual
compression.
The image has to be saved in uncompressed format, for example, as uncompressed TIFF. The distance
parameter of the Delta filter is set to match the number of bytes per pixel in the image. For examā
ple, 24-bit RGB bitmap needs dist=3, and it is also good to pass pb=0 to LZMA2 to accommodate the
three-byte alignment:
xz --delta=dist=3 --lzma2=pb=0 foo.tiff
If multiple images have been put into a single archive (for example, .tar), the Delta filter will
work on that too as long as all images have the same number of bytes per pixel.
SEE ALSO
xzdec(1), xzdiff(1), xzgrep(1), xzless(1), xzmore(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1), 7z(1)
XZ Utils:
XZ Embedded:
LZMA SDK:
Tukaani 2025-03-08 XZ(1)