XZ(1) XZ Utils XZ(1)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
NAME
SYNOPSIS
COMMAND ALIASES
DESCRIPTION
Memory usage
Concatenation and padding with .xz files
OPTIONS
Integer suffixes and special values
Operation mode
Operation modifiers
Basic file format and compression options
Custom compressor filter chains
Other options
ROBOT MODE
List mode
Filters help
Memory limit information
Version
EXIT STATUS
ENVIRONMENT
LZMA UTILS COMPATIBILITY
Compression preset levels
Streamed vs. non-streamed .lzma files
Unsupported .lzma files
Trailing garbage
NOTES
Compressed output may vary
Embedded .xz decompressors
EXAMPLES
Basics
Parallel compression of many files
Robot mode
Custom compressor filter chains
SEE ALSO
KEYWORD INDEX
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 com-
pressed streams with no container format headers are also supported.
In addition, decompression of the .lz format used by lzip is supported.
xz compresses or decompresses each file according to the selected oper-
ation 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 stan-
dard output if it is a terminal. Similarly, xz will refuse to read
compressed data from standard input if it is a terminal.
Unless --stdout is specified, files other than - are written to a new
file whose name is derived from the source file name:
o When compressing, the suffix of the target file format (.xz or
.lzma) is appended to the source filename to get the target file-
name.
o 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 following applies:
o File is not a regular file. Symbolic links are not followed, and
thus they are not considered to be regular files.
o File has more than one hard link.
o File has setuid, setgid, or sticky bit set.
o 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 for-
mat).
o 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 per-
missions 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 access control lists or ex-
tended attributes yet.
Once the target file has been successfully closed, the source file is
removed unless --keep was specified. 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 automati-
cally updating progress indicator.
Memory usage
The memory usage of xz varies from a few hundred kilobytes to several
gigabytes depending on the compression settings. The settings used
when compressing a file determine the memory requirements of the decom-
pressor. Typically the decompressor needs 5 % to 20 % of the amount of
memory that the compressor needed when creating the file. For example,
decompressing a file created with xz -9 currently requires 65 MiB of
memory. Still, it is possible to have .xz files that require several
gigabytes 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 default.
While some operating systems provide ways to limit the memory usage of
processes, relying on it wasn't deemed to be flexible enough (for exam-
ple, 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 sepa-
rately for compression and decompression by using --memlimit-com-
press=limit and --memlimit-decompress=limit. Using these two options
outside XZ_DEFAULTS is rarely useful because a single run of xz cannot
do both compression 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 decompressing 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 --for-
mat=raw or --no-adjust). This way the operation won't fail unless the
limit is very small. The scaling of the settings 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 little, 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 single .xz file.
It is possible to insert padding between the concatenated parts or af-
ter 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 suf-
fix is supported to easily indicate 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 ef-
fect.
-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 --decompress).
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 speci-
fied.
-t, --test
Test the integrity of compressed files. This option is equiva-
lent 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 out-
put is produced, and no files are created or removed. In list
mode, the program cannot read the compressed data from standard
input or from other unseekable sources.
The default listing shows basic information about files, one
file per line. To get more detailed 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 exam-
ple, less -S may be convenient if the terminal isn't wide
enough.
The exact output may vary between xz versions and different lo-
cales. 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 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. In earlier versions this was only done with
--force.
-f, --force
This option has several effects:
o If the target file already exists, delete it before compress-
ing or decompressing.
o 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.
o 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 support 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 for-
mat.
-c, --stdout, --to-stdout
Write the compressed or decompressed data to standard output in-
stead of a file. This implies --keep.
--single-stream
Decompress only the first .xz stream, and silently ignore possi-
ble remaining input data following 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 --decom-
press 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 de-
compressed data contains long sequences of binary zeros. It
also works when writing to standard output as long as standard
output is connected to a regular 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 in-
stead of .xz or .lzma. If not writing to standard output and
the source file already has the suffix .suf, a warning is dis-
played and the file is skipped.
When decompressing, recognize files with the suffix .suf in ad-
dition to files with the .xz, .txz, .lzma, .tlz, or .lz suffix.
If the source file has the suffix .suf, the suffix is removed to
get the target filename.
When compressing or decompressing raw streams (--format=raw),
the suffix must always be specified 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 ter-
minated 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 be-
fore 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 equiva-
lent 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 decompressing. 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 version 0 and the unextended version 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.
The sync flush marker extension to the format version 1
was added in lzip 1.6. This extension is rarely used and
isn't supported by xz (diagnosed as corrupt input).
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 fil-
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 calcu-
lated from the uncompressed data and stored in the .xz file.
This option has an effect only when compressing into the .xz
format; the .lzma format doesn't support integrity checks. The
integrity check (if any) is verified when the .xz file is decom-
pressed.
Supported check types:
none Don't calculate an integrity check at all. This is usu-
ally 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 neg-
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 de-
compressing. The CRC32 values in the .xz headers will still be
verified normally.
Do not use this option unless you know what you are doing. Pos-
sible reasons to use this option:
o Trying to recover data from a corrupt .xz file.
o Speeding up decompression. This matters mostly with SHA-256
or with files that have compressed extremely well. It's rec-
ommended 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 mul-
tiple preset levels are specified, the last one takes effect.
If a custom filter chain was already specified, setting a com-
pression 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 us-
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 compa-
rable or better compression ratio, although the results
depend a lot on the type of data being 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 decom-
pressor memory requirements. These are useful only when
compressing files bigger than 8 MiB, 16 MiB, and 32 MiB,
respectively.
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 decom-
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:
o 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 mat-
ter.
o 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 better compression, see --extreme.
o CompMem contains the compressor memory requirements in the
single-threaded mode. It may vary slightly between xz ver-
sions.
o DecMem contains the decompressor memory requirements. That
is, the compression settings determine the memory require-
ments of the decompressor. The exact decompressor memory us-
age 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 single-threaded mode. With the default
value of --block-size, each thread needs 3*3*DictSize plus Comp-
Mem or DecMem. For example, four threads with preset -6 needs
660-670 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 ra-
tio, but with bad luck this can also make it worse. Decompres-
sor 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
presets 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, respec-
tively. 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 lim-
ited random-access decompression possible. This option is typi-
cally 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 al-
located in each thread for buffering input and output. The de-
fault size is three times the LZMA2 dictionary size or 1 MiB,
whichever is more. Typically a good value is 2-4 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 decompres-
sion.
In single-threaded mode no block splitting is done by default.
Setting this option doesn't affect memory usage. No size infor-
mation 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 after the given intervals of uncom-
pressed 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 previous item.
If the input file is bigger than the sum of the sizes in items,
the last item is repeated until 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 --filters1=filters ... --filters9=filters
options. These options define filter chains with an identifier
between 1-9. 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 un-
compressed 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:
o The filter chain specified by --filters1 and 2 MiB input
o The filter chain specified by --filters3 and 2 MiB input
o The filter chain specified by --filters2 and 4 MiB input
o The filter chain specified by --filters2 and 4 MiB input
o The default filter chain and 2 MiB input
o The default filter chain and 4 MiB input for every block un-
til 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 speci-
fied with --block-size=size), the encoder will create additional
blocks while keeping the boundaries specified in items. For ex-
ample, 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 compress 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 speci-
fied more than once, the last one takes effect. The special
timeout value of 0 can be used to explicitly disable this fea-
ture.
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 im-
prove 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 stor-
age 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 ex-
ceeded 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:
o The limit can be an absolute value in bytes. Using an inte-
ger suffix like MiB can be useful. Example: --memlimit-com-
press=80MiB
o 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 initialization
script that is shared between different computers. That way
the limit is automatically bigger on systems with more mem-
ory. Example: --memlimit-compress=70%
o 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 operation is not possible without ex-
ceeding 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-decom-
press.
In contrast to the other memory usage limit options, --mem-
limit-mt-decompress=limit has a system-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 in-
sane 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 perfor-
mance.
See --memlimit-compress=limit for possible ways to specify the
limit. Setting limit to 0 resets the limit to the default sys-
tem-specific value.
-M limit, --memlimit=limit, --memory=limit
This is equivalent to specifying --memlimit-compress=limit
--memlimit-decompress=limit --memlimit-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 out-
put. 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 dif-
ferent output. Single-threaded compressor will give the small-
est file size but only the output from the multi-threaded com-
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 effect 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 mem-
ory usage limit has been specified, then a system-specific de-
fault 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 independently from each other. The de-
fault 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 condition, 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 de-
tail 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 op-
tion is specified after one or more custom filter chain options, the
new preset takes effect and the custom filter chain options specified
earlier are forgotten.
A filter chain is comparable to piping on the command line. When com-
pressing, the uncompressed input goes to the first filter, whose output
goes to the next filter (if any). The output of the last filter 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 fil-
ters.
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. De-
pending 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 op-
tions --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 fil-
ter options is significant! When decoding raw streams (--format=raw),
the filter chain must be specified in the same order as it was speci-
fied when compressing. Any individual filter or preset options speci-
fied before the full chain option (--filters=filters) will be forgot-
ten. Individual filters specified after the full chain option will re-
set the filter chain.
Both the full and individual filter options take filter-specific op-
tions 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 (--). fil-
ters 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 executable part could use a filter
chain with a BCJ filter and the text part only the LZMA2 filter.
--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 format, which supports only LZMA1.
LZMA2 is an updated version of LZMA1 to fix some practical is-
sues 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 con-
sist of an integer, which may be followed by single-let-
ter 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 --ex-
treme. If no preset is specified, the default values of
LZMA1 or LZMA2 options are taken from the preset 6.
dict=size
Dictionary (history buffer) size indicates how many bytes
of the recently processed uncompressed data is kept in
memory. The algorithm tries to find repeating byte se-
quences (matches) in the uncompressed data, and replace
them with references to the data currently in the dictio-
nary. The bigger the dictionary, the higher is the
chance to find a match. Thus, increasing dictionary size
usually improves compression ratio, but a dictionary big-
ger 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 cur-
rently 1.5 GiB (1536 MiB). The decompressor already sup-
ports 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 addi-
tion, 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 uncompressed byte correlate with
the next byte. For example, in typical English text, an
upper-case letter is often followed by a lower-case let-
ter, and a lower-case letter is usually followed by an-
other 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
uncompressed data.
The default value (3) is usually good. If you want maxi-
mum 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 default 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 com-
pressed 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
default depends on the preset: 0 uses hc3, 1-3 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 0-3 and nor-
mal for presets 4-9.
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 2-273 bytes. Higher values tend to give bet-
ter compression ratio at the expense of speed. The de-
fault 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 4-100 and 16-1000 for
Binary Trees. Using very high values for depth can make
the encoder extremely slow with some files. Avoid set-
ting the depth over 1000 unless you are prepared to in-
terrupt 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 0-15 % smaller .xz file. The BCJ filters are always re-
versible, 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 in-
significant amount of memory.
These BCJ filters have known problems related to the compression
ratio:
o Some types of files containing executable code (for example,
object files, static libraries, and Linux kernel modules)
have the addresses in the instructions filled with filler
values. These BCJ filters will still do the address conver-
sion, which will make the compression worse with these files.
o If a BCJ filter is applied on an archive, it is possible that
it makes the compression ratio 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
practice 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 exe-
cutable 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 improved slightly if the LZMA2 op-
tions are set to match the alignment of the selected BCJ filter.
Examples:
o IA-64 filter has 16-byte alignment so pb=4,lp=4,lc=0 is good
with LZMA2 (2^4=16).
o 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 in-
structions aren't present, pb=2,lp=2,lc=2 is the best. read-
elf -h can be used to check if "RVC" appears on the "Flags"
line.
o ARM64 is always 4-byte aligned so pb=2,lp=2,lc=2 is the best.
o 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 ex-
ecutables.
All BCJ filters support the same options:
start=offset
Specify the start offset that is used when converting be-
tween relative and absolute addresses. The offset must
be a multiple of the alignment of the filter (see the ta-
ble above). The default is zero. In practice, the de-
fault 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 compressing, for example, uncompressed
bitmap images or uncompressed PCM audio. However, special pur-
pose algorithms may give significantly better results than Delta
+ LZMA2. This is true especially 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 1-256. 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 indi-
cate a warning is still used.
-v, --verbose
Be verbose. If standard error is connected to a terminal, xz
will display a progress indicator. Specifying --verbose twice
will give even more verbose output.
The progress indicator shows the following information:
o Completion percentage is shown if the size of the input file
is known. That is, the percentage cannot be shown in pipes.
o Amount of compressed data produced (compressing) or consumed
(decompressing).
o Amount of uncompressed data consumed (compressing) or pro-
duced (decompressing).
o Compression ratio, which is calculated by dividing the amount
of compressed data processed so far by the amount of uncom-
pressed data processed so far.
o Compression or decompression speed. This is measured as the
amount of uncompressed data consumed (compression) or pro-
duced (decompression) per second. It is shown after a few
seconds have passed since xz started processing the file.
o Elapsed time in the format M:SS or H:MM:SS.
o Estimated remaining time is shown only when the size of the
input file is known and a couple 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, compres-
sion 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 operation didn't
finish, for example, due to user interruption, also the comple-
tion 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 warn-
ing 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 li-
blzma, which may be the case with various scripts. The output
with this option enabled is meant to be stable across xz re-
leases. 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 decompression,
and exit successfully.
-h, --help
Display a help message describing the most commonly used op-
tions, 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 out-
put of xz easier to parse by other programs. Currently --robot is sup-
ported 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 indicates 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; different
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 ra-
tio.
7. Comma-separated list of integrity check names. The follow-
ing 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, be-
cause 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 uncompressed 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 ex-
cludes 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 com-
pression time cannot be known, because 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 com-
pressed 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 ear-
lier 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 com-
pressed 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=<value>,option=<value>...
filter Name of the filter
option Name of a filter specific option
value Numeric value ranges appear as <min-max>. String value choices
are shown within < > and separated 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-sepa-
rated 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 indicates the default setting which for sin-
gle-threaded mode is the same as no limit.
3. Memory usage limit for decompression in bytes (--memlimit-decom-
press). A special value of 0 indicates 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-decompress). 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 column 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 number 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 develop-
ment 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 oc-
curred.
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 vari-
ables XZ_DEFAULTS and XZ_OPT, in this order, before parsing the options
from the command line. Note that only options are parsed from the en-
vironment variables; all non-options are silently ignored. Parsing is
done with getopt_long(3) which is used also for the command line argu-
ments.
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 compression op-
tions via the environment variables. However, some options can break
scripts. An obvious example is --help which makes xz show the help
text instead of compressing or decompressing a file. More subtle exam-
ples are --quiet and --verbose. In many cases it works well to enable
the progress indicator using --verbose, but in some situations the ex-
tra messages create problems. The verbosity level also affects the be-
havior 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. Ex-
cluding 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 de-
fault 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, un-
lzma, 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 existing
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 important 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 differences 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 dictionary 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 compressing 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 uncompressed 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 created 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 exam-
ple, a .lzma decompressor in an embedded device might work only with
files that have known uncompressed size. If you hit this problem, you
need to use LZMA Utils or LZMA SDK to create .lzma files with known un-
compressed 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 ac-
cepts 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 situations, 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 --single-stream was used. This may break ob-
scure scripts which have assumed that trailing garbage is ignored.
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 bet-
ter 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 result-
ing 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 rsynca-
ble output stable across xz versions.
Embedded .xz decompressors
Embedded .xz decompressor implementations like XZ Embedded don't neces-
sarily 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 veri-
fying the integrity check if the particular check is not supported.
XZ Embedded supports BCJ filters, but only with the default start off-
set.
EXAMPLES
Basics
Compress the file foo into foo.xz using the default compression level
(-6), and remove foo if compression is successful:
xz foo
Decompress bar.xz into bar and don't remove bar.xz even if decompres-
sion 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 decom-
pression (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 stan-
dard output with a single command:
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 com-
pression 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, be-
cause xargs(1) is used to control 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-$4}'
A script may want to know that it is using new enough xz. The follow-
ing sh(1) script checks that the version number of the xz tool is at
least 5.0.0. This method is compatible with old beta versions, which
didn't support the --robot option:
if ! eval "$(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 pre-
set. 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 better. 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
similarities 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 requirements of the compressor and decompressor. Re-
member 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 example, 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 filter 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 fil-
ters than simple delta but uses Deflate for the actual compression.
The image has to be saved in uncompressed format, for example, as un-
compressed TIFF. The distance parameter of the Delta filter is set to
match the number of bytes per pixel in the image. For example, 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: <https://tukaani.org/xz/>
XZ Embedded: <https://tukaani.org/xz/embedded.html>
LZMA SDK: <https://7-zip.org/sdk.html>
KEYWORD INDEX
--arm64
--armthumb
--arm
--best
--block-list
--block-size
--check
--compress
--decompress
--delta
--extreme
--fast
--files0
--files
--filters-help
--filters1
--filters9
--filters
--flush-timeout
--force
--format
--help
--ia64
--ignore-check
--info-memory
--keep
--list
--long-help
--lzma1
--lzma2
--memlimit-compress
--memlimit-decompress
--memlimit-mt-decompress
--memlimit
--memory
--no-adjust
--no-sparse
--no-sync
--no-warn
--powerpc
--quiet
--riscv
--robot
--single-stream
--sparc
--stdout
--suffix
--test
--threads
--to-stdout
--uncompress
--verbose
--version
--x86
-0
-9
-c
-d
-e
-f
-h
-k
-l
-M
-q
-S
-t
-v
-z
block
file
GiB
KiB
LIBLZMA_VERSION
MiB
name
stream
summary
totals
XZ_DEFAULTS
XZ_OPT
XZ_VERSION
Tukaani 2025-03-08 XZ(1)