How to use tar with lz4?

Question

How to use tar and filter the archive through LZ4? Or any available tools? It looks cumbersome to use tar cvf folderABC.tar folderABC && lz4c -c0 folderABC.tar.

PS: *nix environment

Cyan · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-10T23:38:20.440

34

lz4 has a command line structure similar to gzip. Therefore, something like this will work :

tar cvf - folderABC | lz4 > folderABC.tar.lz4

or

tar cvf - folderABC | lz4 - folderABC.tar.lz4

First one compresses silently, like gzip. Second one is a bit more lz4-specific, and will also display summarized compression stats.

Decompression would go like this :

lz4 -d folderABC.tar.lz4 -c | tar xvf -

edited Nov 10 '22 at 23:38

answered Jun 06 '14 at 16:01

Cyan

13,248
8
43
78

Is there a standard way to add CRC32 to tar.lz4 to detect corrupted files? – user643011 Jul 03 '16 at 14:07
1

lz4 already applies a 32-bits checksum by default to detect corruption. It is based on [XXH32](http://www.xxhash.com). – Cyan Jul 04 '16 at 14:54
2

thanks! I used it for backing up my home dir https://gist.github.com/timabell/68d112d66623d9a4a3643c86a93debee – Tim Abell Mar 15 '18 at 10:34
You might need to install ```lz4``` for ubuntu. ```sudo apt-get install liblz4-tool``` – Shivangi Singh Mar 24 '21 at 17:18
How to correctly decompress and untar `folderABC.tar.lz4`? Can pipe be uzed? – pmor Nov 10 '22 at 10:40
@pmor yes, pipe can be used – Cyan Nov 10 '22 at 23:38

Gert van den Berg · Answer 2 · 2019-12-06T08:54:24.433

26

On GNU tar, you can use -I lz4

Both FreeBSD and GNU tar seems to support --use-compress-program=lz4 as well.

tar -I lz4 -cf archive.tar.lz4 stuff to add to archive
tar -I lz4 -xf archive.tar.lz4

or

tar --use-compress-program=lz4 -cf archive.tar.lz4 stuff to add to archive
tar --use-compress-program=lz4 -xf archive.tar.lz4

edited Dec 06 '19 at 08:54

answered Nov 12 '19 at 10:48

Gert van den Berg

2,448
31
41

`You must specify one of the '-Acdtrux', '--delete' or '--test-label' options` – Gaia Dec 05 '19 at 03:41
@Gaia I would normally use `-cf` and `-xf`. Not sure if it is portable to non GNU tar versions, so I kept the style of the question. (edited answer) – Gert van den Berg Dec 06 '19 at 08:54

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 09 '21 at 18:36

2

To use -I in GNU tar, you must specify it AFTER destination file as this:

tar cvf /path/to/destinationfile.tar.lz4 -I lz4 /path/to/archive

answered Apr 09 '21 at 18:36

JTerry

29
2

This is likely when using the non-dashed version of the operation options. – Gert van den Berg Nov 01 '22 at 13:14

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 13 '23 at 17:12

2

Install lz4

sudo apt install lz4

Compress

tar --use-compress-program=lz4 -cvf target.lz4 /source/files

Decompress

tar --use-compress-program=lz4 -xvf target.lz4 -C /destination

answered Apr 13 '23 at 17:12

skyehash

31
1

How to use tar with lz4?

4 Answers4

Linked