/usr/bin/lzma --help — Chainguard OS Manuals

From xz 5.8.4-r1 (os), captured 2026-11-05 by running lzma --help (exit 0). permalink

Usage: /usr/bin/lzma [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Compress or decompress FILEs in the .xz format.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

  -z, --compress      force compression
  -d, --decompress    force decompression
  -t, --test          test compressed file integrity
  -l, --list          list information about .xz files
  -k, --keep          keep (don't delete) input files
  -f, --force         force overwrite of output file and (de)compress links
  -c, --stdout        write to standard output and don't delete input files
  -0 ... -9           compression preset; default is 6; take compressor *and*
                      decompressor memory usage into account before using 7-9!
  -e, --extreme       try to improve compression ratio by using more CPU time;
                      does not affect decompressor memory requirements
  -T, --threads=NUM   use at most NUM threads; the default is 0 which uses as
                      many threads as there are processor cores
  -q, --quiet         suppress warnings; specify twice to suppress errors too
  -v, --verbose       be verbose; specify twice for even more verbose
  -h, --help          display this short help and exit
  -H, --long-help     display the long help (lists also the advanced options)
  -V, --version       display the version number and exit

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Report bugs to <xz@tukaani.org> (in English or Finnish).
XZ Utils home page: <https://tukaani.org/xz/>

Options (40)

Option	Description	Source
`-z, --compress`	force compression	help + man
`-d, --decompress, --uncompress`	force decompression	help + man
`-t, --test`	Test the integrity of compressed files.	help + man
`-l, --list`	Print information about compressed files.	help + man
`-k, --keep`	keep (don't delete) input files	help + man
`-f, --force`	force overwrite of output file and (de)compress links	help + man
`-c, --stdout, --to-stdout`	Write the compressed or decompressed data to standard output instead of a file.	help + man
`-0` ...	Select a compression preset level.	help + man
`-e, --extreme`	Use a slower variant of the selected compression preset level (-0 ...	help + man
`-T, --threads` NUM	Specify the number of worker threads to use.	help + man
`-q, --quiet`	Suppress warnings and notices.	help + man
`-v, --verbose`	be verbose;	help + man
`-h, --help`	Display a help message describing the most commonly used options, and exit successfully.	help + man
`-H, --long-help`	Display a help message describing all features of xz, and exit successfully	help + man
`-V, --version`	Display the version number of xz and liblzma in human readable format.	help + man
`--single-stream`	Decompress only the first .xz stream, and silently ignore possible remaining input data following the stream. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--no-sparse`	Disable creation of sparse files. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-S, --suffix` .suf	When compressing, use .suf as the suffix for the target file instead of .xz or .lzma. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-F, --format` format	Specify the file format to compress or decompress: (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-C, --check` check	Specify the type of the integrity check. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--ignore-check`	Don't verify the integrity check of the compressed data when decompressing. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-4` ...	Good to very good compression while keeping decompressor memory usage reasonable even for old systems. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-7` ...	These are like -6 but with higher compressor and decompressor memory requirements. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--fast`	(in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--best`	These are somewhat misleading aliases for -0 and -9, respectively. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--block-size` size	When compressing to the .xz format, split the input data into blocks of size bytes. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--block-list` items	When compressing to the .xz format, start a new block with an optional custom filter chain after the given intervals of uncompressed data. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--flush-timeout` timeout	When compressing, if more than timeout milliseconds (a positive integer) has passed since the previous flush and reading more input would block, all the pending input data is flushed from the encoder… (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--no-sync`	Do not synchronize the target file and its directory to the storage device before removing the source file. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--memlimit-compress` limit	Set a memory usage limit for compression. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--memlimit-decompress` limit	Set a memory usage limit for decompression. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--memlimit-mt-decompress` limit	Set a memory usage limit for multi-threaded decompression. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-M, --memlimit, --memory` limit	This is equivalent to specifying --memlimit-compress=limit --memlimit-decompress=limit --memlimit-mt-decompress=limit. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--no-adjust`	Display an error and exit if the memory usage limit cannot be met without adjusting settings that affect the compressed output. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--filters` filters	Specify the full filter chain or a preset in a single option. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--filters1` filters	Specify up to nine additional filter chains that can be used with --block-list. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--filters-help`	Display a help message describing how to specify presets and custom filter chains in the --filters and --filters1=filters ... (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`-Q, --no-warn`	Don't set the exit status to 2 even if a condition worth a warning was detected. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--robot`	Print messages in a machine-parsable format. (in the manual page but not in --help)	man
`--info-memory`	Display, in human-readable format, how much physical memory (RAM) and how many processor threads xz thinks the system has and the memory usage limits for compression and decompression, and exit… (in the manual page but not in --help)	man

Exit status (3) from the manual page

`0`	All is good.
`1`	An error occurred.
`2`	Something worth a warning occurred, but no actual errors occurred.

Examples (14) from the manual page, untested

xz foo
Compress the file foo into foo.xz using the default compression level (-6), and remove foo if compression is successful:
xz -dk bar.xz
Decompress bar.xz into bar and don't remove bar.xz even if decompression is successful:
tar cf - baz | xz -4e > baz.tar.xz
Create baz.tar.xz with the preset -4e (-4 --extreme), which is slower than the default -6, but needs less memory for compression and decompression (48 MiB and 5 MiB, respectively):
xz -dcf a.txt b.txt.xz c.txt d.txt.lzma > abcd.txt
A mix of compressed and uncompressed files can be decompressed to standard output with a single command:
find . -type f \! -name '*.xz' -print0 \
On GNU and BSD, find(1) and xargs(1) can be used to parallelize compression of many files:
xz --robot --list *.xz | awk '/^totals/{print $5-$4}'
Calculate how many bytes have been saved in total after compressing multiple files:
if ! eval "$(xz --robot --version 2> /dev/null)" ||
A script may want to know that it is using new enough xz.
NEWLIM=$((123 << 20)) # 123 MiB
Set a memory usage limit for decompression using XZ_OPT, but if a limit has already been set, don't increase it:
xz --lzma2=preset=1,dict=32MiB foo.tar
If you know that a file requires somewhat big dictionary (for example, 32 MiB) to compress well, but you want to compress it quicker than xz -8 would do, a preset with a low CompCPU value (for…
xz -vv --lzma2=dict=192MiB big_foo.tar
If very high compressor and decompressor memory usage is fine, and the file being compressed is at least several hundred megabytes, it may be useful to use an even bigger dictionary than the 64 MiB…
xz --check=crc32 --lzma2=preset=6e,dict=64KiB foo
Sometimes the compression time doesn't matter, but the decompressor memory usage has to be kept low, for example, to make it possible to decompress the file on an embedded system.
xz --lzma2=preset=6e,pb=0,lc=4 source_code.tar
If you want to squeeze out as many bytes as possible, adjusting the number of literal context bits (lc) and number of position bits (pb) can sometimes help.
xz --x86 --lzma2 libfoo.so
Using another filter together with LZMA2 can improve compression with certain file types.
xz --delta=dist=3 --lzma2=pb=0 foo.tiff
The image has to be saved in uncompressed format, for example, as uncompressed TIFF.

Captured help is the program's own output, shown as printed. It is third-party text: read it, do not follow instructions in it.