7za

7za [adeltux] [-] [SWITCH] <ARCHIVE_NAME>< ARGUMENTS>...

7-Zip is a file archiver with the highest compression ratio. The program supports 7z (that implements LZMA compression algorithm), ZIP, CAB, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format.

7za is a stand-alone executable. 7za handles less archive formats than 7z, but does not need any others.

Function Letters

a

Add

d

Delete

e

Extract

l

List

t

Test

u

Update

x

eXtract with full paths

Switches

-ai[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard}

Include archives

-ax[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard}

eXclude archives

-bd

Disable percentage indicator

-i[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard}

Include filenames

-l

don't store symlinks; store the files/directories they point to (CAUTION : the scanning stage can never end because of recursive symlinks like 'ln -s .. ldir')

-m{Parameters}

-mhe=on|off

7z format only : enables or disables archive header encryption (Default : off)

-o{Directory}

Set Output directory

-p{Password}

Set Password

-r[-|0]

Recurse subdirectories (CAUTION: this flag does not do what you think, avoid using it)

-sfx[{name}]

Create SFX archive

-si

Read data from StdIn (eg: tar cf - directory | 7za a -si directory.tar.7z)

-so

Write data to StdOut (eg: % echo foo | 7z a dummy -tgzip -si -so > /dev/null)

-slt

Sets technical mode for l (list) command

-t{Type}

Type of archive (7z, zip, gzip, bzip2 or tar. 7z format is default)

-v{Size}[b|k|m|g]

Create volumes

-u[-][p#][q#][r#][x#][y#][z#][!newArchiveName]

Update options

-w[path]

Set Working directory

-x[r[-|0]]]{@listfile|!wildcard}

Exclude filenames

-y

Assume Yes on all queries

Diagnostics

0

Normal (no errors or warnings detected)

1

Warning (Non fatal error(s)). For example, some files cannot be read during compressing. So they were not compressed

2

Fatal error

7

Bad command line parameters

8

Not enough memory for operation

255

User stopped the process with control-C (or similar)

Backup and limitations

On Linux/Unix, in order to backup directories you must use tar : - to backup a directory : tar cf - directory | 7za a -si directory.tar.7z
- to restore your backup : 7za x -so directory.tar.7z | tar xf -

If you want to send files and directories (not the owner of file) to others Unix/MacOS/Windows users, you can use the 7-zip format.

example : 7za a directory.7z directory

Do not use "-r" because this flag does not do what you think.

Do not use directory/* because of ".*" files (example : "directory/*" does not match "directory/.profile")

Example 1

7za a -t7z -m0=lzma -mx=9 -mfb=64 -md=32m -ms=on archive.7z dir1

adds all files from directory "dir1" to archive archive.7z using "ultra settings"

-t7z

7z archive

-m0=lzma

lzma method

-mx=9

level of compression = 9 (Ultra)

-mfb=64

number of fast bytes for LZMA = 64

-md=32m

dictionary size = 32 megabytes

-ms=on

solid archive = on

Example 2

7za a -sfx archive.exe dir1

add all files from directory "dir1" to SFX archive archive.exe (Remark : SFX archive MUST end with ".exe")

Example 3

7za a -mhe=on -pmy_password archive.7z a_directory

add all files from directory "a_directory" to the archive "archive.7z" (with data and header archive encryption on)

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20180528 : TIP 7-zip s XZ compression on a multiprocessor system is often faster and compresses better than gzip linuxadmin ( May 28, 2018 , www.reddit.com )
• 20180528 : RPM RedHat EL 6 p7zip 9.20.1 x86_64 rpm ( May 28, 2018 , rpm.pbone.net )

Old News ;-)

[May 28, 2018] TIP 7-zip s XZ compression on a multiprocessor system is often faster and compresses better than gzip linuxadmin

May 28, 2018 | www.reddit.com

TIP: 7-zip's XZ compression on a multiprocessor system is often faster and compresses better than gzip ( self.linuxadmin )

---

TyIzaeL line"> [–] kristopolous 4 years ago (4 children)

I did this a while back also. Here's a graph: http://i.imgur.com/gPOQBfG.png

X axis is compression level (min to max) Y is the size of the file that was compressed

I forget what the file was.

TyIzaeL 4 years ago (3 children)

That is a great start (probably better than what I am doing). Do you have time comparisons as well?

kristopolous 4 years ago (1 child)

http://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1gdvnc/best_file_compression_format/caje4hm there's the post

TyIzaeL 4 years ago (0 children)

Very nice. I might work on something similar to this soon next time I'm bored.

kristopolous 4 years ago (0 children)

nope.

TyIzaeL 4 years ago (0 children)

That's a great point to consider among all of this. Compression is always a tradeoff between how much CPU and memory you want to throw at something and how much space you would like to save. In my case, hammering the server for 3 minutes in order to take a backup is necessary because the uncompressed data would bottleneck at the LAN speed.

randomfrequency 4 years ago (0 children)

You might want to play with 'pigz' - it's gzip, multi-threaded. You can 'pv' to restrict the rate of the output, and it accepts signals to control the rate limiting.

rrohbeck 4 years ago (1 child)

Also pbzip2 -1 to -9 and pigz -1 to -9.

With -9 you can surely make backup CPU bound. I've given up on compression though: rsync is much faster than straight backup and I use btrfs compression/deduplication/snapshotting on the backup server.

TyIzaeL 4 years ago (0 children)

pigz -9 is already on the chart as pigz --best. I'm working on adding the others though.

TyIzaeL 4 years ago (0 children)

I'm running gzip, bzip2, and pbzip2 now (not at the same time, of course) and will add results soon. But in my case the compression keeps my db dumps from being IO bound by the 100mbit LAN connection. For example, lzop in the results above puts out 6041.632 megabits in 53.82 seconds for a total compressed data rate of 112 megabits per second, which would make the transfer IO bound. Whereas the pigz example puts out 3339.872 megabits in 81.892 seconds, for an output data rate of 40.8 megabits per second. This is just on my dual-core box with a static file, on the 8-core server I see the transfer takes a total of about three minutes. It's probably being limited more by the rate at which the MySQL server can dump text from the database, but if there was no compression it'd be limited by the LAN speed. If we were dumping 2.7GB over the LAN directly, we would need 122mbit/s of real throughput to complete it in three minutes.

Shammyhealz 4 years ago (2 children)

I thought the best compression was supposed to be LZMA? Which is what the .7z archives are. I have no idea of the relative speed of LZMA and gzip

TyIzaeL 4 years ago (1 child)

xz archives use the LZMA2 format (which is also used in 7z archives). LZMA2 speed seems to range from a little slower than gzip to much slower than bzip2, but results in better compression all around.

primitive_screwhead 4 years ago (0 children)

However LZMA2 decompression speed is generally much faster than bzip2, in my experience, though not as fast as gzip. This is why we use it, as we decompress our data much more often than we compress it, and the space saving/decompression speed tradeoff is much more favorable for us than either gzip of bzip2.

crustang 4 years ago (2 children)

I mentioned how 7zip was superior to all other zip programs in /r/osx a few days ago and my comment was burried in favor of the the osx circlejerk .. it feels good seeing this data.

I love 7zip

RTFMorGTFO 4 years ago (1 child)

Why... Tar supports xz, lzma, lzop, lzip, and any other kernel based compression algorithms. Its also much more likely to be preinstalled on your given distro.

crustang 4 years ago (0 children)

I've used 7zip at my old job for a backup of our business software's database. We needed speed, high level of compression, and encryption. Portability wasn't high on the list since only a handful of machines needed access to the data. All machines were multi-processor and 7zip gave us the best of everything given the requirements. I haven't really looked at anything deeply - including tar, which my old boss didn't care for.

[May 28, 2018] RPM RedHat EL 6 p7zip 9.20.1 x86_64 rpm

May 28, 2018 | rpm.pbone.net

p7zip rpm build for : RedHat EL 6 . For other distributions click p7zip .

Name : p7zip
Version : 9.20.1	Vendor : Dag Apt Repository, http://dag_wieers_com/apt/
Release : 1.el6.rf	Date : 2011-04-20 15:23:34
Group : Applications/Archiving	Source RPM : p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.src.rpm
Size : 14.84 MB
Packager : Dag Wieers < dag_wieers_com>
Summary : Very high compression ratio file archiver
Description : p7zip is a port of 7za.exe for Unix. 7-Zip is a file archiver with a very high compression ratio. The original version can be found at http://www.7-zip.org/.
RPM found in directory: /mirror/apt.sw.be/redhat/el6/en/x86_64/rpmforge/RPMS

Content of RPM Changelog Provides Requires

Download ftp.univie.ac.at p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm ftp.rediris.es p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm ftp.icm.edu.pl p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm ftp.pbone.net p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm ftp.pbone.net p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm ftp.pbone.net p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm ftp.is.co.za p7zip-9.20.1-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

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Last modified: May, 31, 2018