"xz/unxz" - Compressed *.xz or *.lzma Files

Linux Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"xz/unxz" - Compressed *.xz or *.lzma Files

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use 'xz' and 'unxz' commands to compress large files and restore them later. Compressed files will have the *.xz file name extension.

If you have a large file, you may want to compress it with the "xz" utility to save storage space.

1. Compress a file with the "xz" command, which uses the LZMA2 algorithm. The original file is replaced with the compressed version and renamed to the same name plus the extension .xz.

herong$ cp history-of-linux.txt history-of-linux-bck.txt

herong$ xz history-of-linux.txt

herong$ ls -l history*
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff  1444  history-of-linux-bck.txt
-rw-r--r--. 1 herong  staff   916  history-of-linux.txt.xz

2. Restore a compressed file with the "unxz" command. The compressed file is replaced with the restored version and renamed to the original name without the extension .xz.

herong$ unxz history-of-linux.txt.xz

herong$ ls -l history*
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff  1444  history-of-linux-bck.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff  1444  history-of-linux.txt