Efficient File Compression with pigz

Unlock the potential of pigz, a parallel implementation of gzip designed for efficient file compression and decompression. Explore essential commands for compressing and decompressing files, adjust compression levels to balance speed and size, harness the power of multicore processing, efficiently handle files including compression of multiple files into a single archive and decompression of archives, utilize different compression modes like ZLIB and LZMA, manage output options for customized handling, and delve into advanced usages such as independent blocks and processing tar files. Discover how pigz can streamline your file compression tasks.

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Basic Usage

Compress a file

pigz filename

Decompress a file

unpigz filename.gz

or

pigz -d filename.gz

Compression Levels

Here's a table that provides the various compression levels you can use with pigz, and the corresponding commands:

Level	Description	Command
1	Fast compression	pigz -1 filename
2-8	Tradeoff between speed & size	pigz -5 filename
9	Best compression, slowest speed	pigz -9 filename

Multicore Processing

Use specific number of processors

pigz -p 4 filename

Compress a file using all available cores

pigz -p $(nproc) filename

File Handling

Keep the original files

pigz -k filename

Compress multiple files into a single archive

tar cf - paths... | pigz > archive.tar.gz

Decompress an archive

unpigz -c archive.tar.gz | tar xf -

Compression Modes

Use Standard compression (default)

pigz filename

Use ZLIB compression

pigz -z filename

Use LZMA compression

pigz -l filename

Output

Write output to stdout

pigz -c filename > output.gz

Verbose mode

pigz -v filename

Advanced Usages

Compress a file with maximum compression and highest number of processing cores

pigz -9 -p $(nproc) filename

Use independent blocks for improved multicore inflation

pigz -i filename

Process a tar file with pigz

tar cf - paths... | pigz -p $(nproc) -9 > file.tar.gz

Others

Test the compressed file integrity

pigz -t filename.gz

Show the pigz version

pigz -V

Efficient remote forensic disk acquisition gpg-crypted for multiple recipientsa

Acquires a bit-by-bit data image, gzip-compresses it on multiple cores (pigz) and encrypts the data for multiple recipients (gpg -e -r). It finally sends it off to a remote machine.

dd if=/dev/sdb | pigz | gpg -r <recipient1> -r <recipient2> -e --homedir /home/to/.gnupg | nc remote_machine 1337