I am trying to create a .tar.xz
compressed archive in one command. What is the specific syntax for that?
I have tried tar cf - file | xz file.tar.xz
, but that does not work.
I am trying to create a .tar.xz
compressed archive in one command. What is the specific syntax for that?
I have tried tar cf - file | xz file.tar.xz
, but that does not work.
Use the -J
compression option for xz
. And remember to man tar
:)
tar cfJ <archive.tar.xz> <files>
Edit 2015-08-10:
If you're passing the arguments to tar
with dashes (ex: tar -cf
as opposed to tar cf
), then the -f
option must come last, since it specifies the filename (thanks to @A-B-B for pointing that out!). In that case, the command looks like:
tar -cJf <archive.tar.xz> <files>
Switch -J
only works on newer systems. Universal command is:
To make .tar.xz archive
tar cf - directory/ | xz -z - > directory.tar.xz
Explanation
tar cf - directory
reads directory/ and starts putting it to TAR format. Output of this operation is generated on the standard output.
|
pipes standard output to input of another program...
... which happens to be xz -zf -
. XZ is configured to create (-z
) the archive from file (-f
) which happens to be standard input (-
).
You redirect the output from xz
to the tar.xz
file.
If you like the pipe mode, this is the most clean solution:
tar c some-dir | xz > some-dir.tar.xz
It's not necessary to put the f
option in order to deal with files and then to use -
to specify that the file is the standard input. It's also not necessary to specify the -z
option for xz
, because it's default.
It works with gzip
and bzip2
too:
tar c some-dir | gzip > some-dir.tar.gz
or
tar c some-dir | bzip2 > some-dir.tar.bz2
Decompressing is also quite straightforward:
xzcat tarball.tar.xz | tar x
bzcat tarball.tar.bz2 | tar x
zcat tarball.tar.gz | tar x
If you have only tar
archive, you can use cat
:
cat archive.tar | tar x
If you need to list the files only, use tar t
.
Try this: tar -cf file.tar file-to-compress ; xz -z file.tar
Note:
|
because this runs commands simultaneously. Using ;
or &
executes commands one after another.If you want to use compression options for xz
, or if you are using tar
on MacOS, you probably want to avoid the tar -cJf
syntax.
According to man xz
, the way to do this is:
tar cf - baz | xz -4e > baz.tar.xz
Because I liked Wojciech Adam Koszek's format, but not information:
c
creates a new archive for the specified files. f
reads from a directory (best to put this second because -cf
!= -fc
)-
outputs to Standard Output|
pipes output to the next commandxz -4e
calls xz
with the -4e
compression option. (equal to -4
--extreme
)> baz.tar.xz
directs the tarred and compressed file to baz.tar.xz
where -4e
is, use your own compression options.
I often use -k
to --keep
the original file and -9
for really heavy compression. -z
to manually set xz
to zip, though it defaults to zipping if not otherwise directed.
To echo Rafael van Horn, to uncompress & untar (see note below):
xz -dc baz.tar.xz | tar x
Note: unlike Rafael's answer, use xz -dc
instead of catxz
. The docs recommend this in case you are using this for scripting. Best to have a habit of using -d
or --decompress
instead of unxz
as well. However, if you must, using those commands from the command line is fine.