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pigz

pigz (parallel implementation of gzip) is a fully functional replacement for gzip that exploits multiple processors and multiple cores when compressing data. pigz is extremely helpful when compacting a large directory. unpigz (equivalent to 'gunzip') is used to uncompress gzip'ed file and unpigz utilizes only one thread.

pigz can be accessed by loading a pigz module (run "module spider pigz" to find the module name). On FTN nodes, pigz is available without loading the module.

Simple examples

  • Compress a file

    pigz my_file

  • Compress a file with best compression rate

    pigz -9 my_file pigz --best my_file

  • Uncompress

    unpigz my_file.gz

  • Specify number of threads ('-p no_thread'). The number of compress threads is set by default to the number of online processors.

    pigz -9 -p 10 my_big_file

Using tar with pigz

  • specify compress program for tar

    tar -I pgz cf my_dir.tar.gz my_dir/ tar --use=compress-program pigz my_dir.tar.gz my_dir/

  • specify more options with pigz

tar cf - my_dir/ | pigz -9 > my_dir.tgz
tar cf - my_dir1 my_dir2 | pigz -9 -p 15 > my_backup.tgz

References