How To Compress/Decompress File Or Folder In Linux

In Linux there various commands which  help us to compress and decompress a data. By doing a compression  we can able to reduce the size of the data and data will not be missing while transferring from one server to other.

Zip

zip is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix/Linux. Each file is stored in single .zip {.zip-filename} file with the extension .zip.

Compress for zip

root@linuxstorage:~#zip data.zip data
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data.zip

Zip a folder for zip

root@linuxstorage:~#zip -r folder.zip data
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
folder.zip

Decompress

root@linuxstorage:~#unzip data.zip
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data

Gzip 

Gzip compress the size of the given files using Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77). Whenever possible, each file is replaced by one with the extension .gz.

gzip is a commonly used compression format in GNU/Linux platforms

Compress for gzip

root@linuxstorage:~#gzip data
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data.gz

Decompress for gzip
 

root@linuxstorage:~#gunzip data.gz
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data
 OR
root@linuxstorage:~#gzip -d data.gz
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data

Bzip2

bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. Compression is generally considerably better than that achieved by bzip command (LZ77/LZ78-based compressors). Whenever possible, each file is replaced by one with the extension .bz2

Compress for bzip2
 

 root@linuxstorage:~#bzip2 data
 root@linuxstorage:~#ls
 data.bz2

 Decompress for bzip2

root@linuxstorage:~# bzip2 -ddata.bz2
or
root@linuxstorage:~#gunzip data.bz2
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data

  
Gzip and Bzip2 with tarball

The GNU tar is archiving utility but it can be use to compressing large file(s). GNU tar supports both archive compressing through gzip and bzip2. If you have more than 2 files then it is recommended to use tar instead of gzip or bzip2

-z: use gzip compress
-j: use bzip2 compress

Compress for gzip

root@linuxstorage:~#tar  -zcvf  data.tar.gz   [/path/files]

root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data.tar.gz

• -z: Compress archive using gzip program
• -c: Create archive
• -v: Verbose i.e display progress while creating archive
• -f: Archive File name

Decompress for gzip

root@linuxstorage:~#tar -zxvf data.tar.gz
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data

• -x: Extract files

Compress for bzip2

root@linuxstorage:~#tar  -jcvf  data.tar.bz2 [/path/files]

root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data.tar.bz2

Decompress for bzip2

root@linuxstorage:~#tar -jxvf data.tar.bz2
root@linuxstorage:~#ls
data

Browse More Articles

Tweet

Written by Unknown