Couldn't help but pipe up after I saw people crowing about 7-zip and some other archivers on here.
On my last contracting gig I had the opportunity to see the compression results of a couple of archivers I hadn't used before... Namely lrzip and xz.
Lrzip I liked because its window size or the way that it scans the data is _much_ better for locating redundancy, especially in large archives. It achives better compression than anything I've really seen before, which is really useful if you're dealing with tarballs several G in size that may have to go out over the network, etc. Plus if you've got files in the archive that aren't compressable, you just tell it to use lzo compression and you're good to go.
Xz was pretty swift, too. Better compression than usual, again, but this time at about the speed of bzip2. The last one was significantly slower, though it was worth it if you were gonna put stuff out over the wire. Wherever space makes a difference I've started using that (usually with '-9'). That's primarily because I'm on a system with only a couple of TB (*grin*) that's still space bound.
Curious to see if anybody else has any favorite archivers that are outside of the norm as well that they'd like to share.

-D/K

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Hi,

On 2016-01-10 16:18:15, Khelair wrote to All:
about: "Favorite archivers":

Couldn't help but pipe up after I saw people crowing about 7-zip and
some other archivers on here.

On my last contracting gig I had the opportunity to see the
compression results of a couple of archivers I hadn't used before... Namely lrzip and xz.

There is a difference between archivers (like 7zip, zip, rar, ace, arj, lha, arc, etc), that can compress multiple files including the directory structure and meta data, and compressors that can only compress a stream of data or a single file (like xz, lrzip, gzip, bzip2, ...).

Afaik 7zip and xz use virtually the same compression algorithm.

Lrzip I liked because its window size or the way that it scans the
data is _much_ better for locating redundancy, especially in large archives. It achives better compression than anything I've really
seen before, which is really useful if you're dealing with tarballs several G in size that may have to go out over the network, etc. Plus
if you've got files in the archive that aren't compressable, you just
tell it to use lzo compression and you're good to go.

I didn't know about lrzip. According to the wiki it is a compression program optimised for larger files (> 100MB), so it isn't very usefull for sending fidonet pkt files. ;)

Xz was pretty swift, too. Better compression than usual, again, but
this time at about the speed of bzip2. The last one was significantly slower, though it was worth it if you were gonna put stuff out over
the wire. Wherever space makes a difference I've started using that (usually with '-9'). That's primarily because I'm on a system with
only a couple of TB (*grin*) that's still space bound.

xz is the default now when automatically compressing rotated logfiles on openSUSE...

Curious to see if anybody else has any favorite archivers that are
outside of the norm as well that they'd like to share.

I tested some, but I mainly stick with the mainstream compressors/archivers. You don't want broken archives with valuable data, because you hit a bug in some obscure new compression program.

Bye, Wilfred.


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Re: Re: Favorite archivers
By: Wilfred van Velzen to Khelair on Mon Jan 11 2016 20:59:42

There is a difference between archivers (like 7zip, zip, rar, ace, arj, lha, arc, etc), that can compress multiple files including the directory structure and meta data, and compressors that can only compress a stream of data or a single file (like xz, lrzip, gzip, bzip2, ...).

Very true. I thought about that while I was posting, but the lazy was too powerful for me to go back and add all the correction. ;)

Afaik 7zip and xz use virtually the same compression algorithm.

This I was not aware of. I actually have shunned 7zip for awhile; I'll have to look into it a little bit better.

I didn't know about lrzip. According to the wiki it is a compression program optimised for larger files (> 100MB), so it isn't very usefull for sending fidonet pkt files. ;)

The resulting additional compression was very handy when compressing files that had to go out via the internet to other machines; I didn't usually bother unless they were getting into the dozens or hundreds of GB. No, though, not very useful for fidonet. ;)

xz is the default now when automatically compressing rotated logfiles on openSUSE...

I thought for Debian, also, but I just looked and realized that it's still using gzip. I must've just remembered seeing all of the .xz extensions in the log directory when I was doing digging through the logs on the CentOS servers that I was working with before.

I tested some, but I mainly stick with the mainstream compressors/archivers. You don't want broken archives with valuable data, because you hit a bug in some obscure new compression program.

That was, actually, my opinion as well. I was kind of overruled about using the new compression algorithms on my last position, primarily to cut down on the time that it'd take to spin up new dev servers. When I'm doing scripting and work that's going to be automated and left I usually stick to the same guidelines.

-D/K

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Afaik 7zip and xz use virtually the same compression algorithm.

This I was not aware of. I actually have shunned 7zip for awhile;

Why's that? I've been using 7-zip for a couple years or so now, and I like it - It seems to compress better than my previous favorite archiver, RAR. Also 7- zip is free (although I did pay for a license for WinRAR).

Nightfox

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Hi Khelair,

On 2016-01-12 09:08:45, you wrote to me:

Afaik 7zip and xz use virtually the same compression algorithm.

This I was not aware of. I actually have shunned 7zip for awhile; I'll have to look into it a little bit better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xz

I tested some, but I mainly stick with the mainstream
compressors/archivers. You don't want broken archives with valuable
data, because you hit a bug in some obscure new compression program.

That was, actually, my opinion as well. I was kind of overruled about using the new compression algorithms on my last position, primarily to cut down on the time that it'd take to spin up new dev servers. When I'm

doing

scripting and work that's going to be automated and left I usually stick

to

the same guidelines.

Well it's different if you use compression for archiving or just for transportation, where originals still exist, and validity can be determinded with checksums...

Bye, Wilfred.

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Re: Favorite archivers
By: Nightfox to Khelair on Tue Jan 12 2016 12:31:44

Why's that? I've been using 7-zip for a couple years or so now, and I like it - It seems to compress better than my previous favorite archiver, RAR. Also 7- zip is free (although I did pay for a license for WinRAR).

I don't know. Honestly I think it was a comment that another dev made to me before I really knew anything else about it. It was from somebody a bit judgmental without necessarily knowing all of the facts about the matter, so I probably should've ignored it and checked it out myself. Anyway I'm going to be testing it in the future here, so my foolishness has abated. ;)

-D/K

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