[lug] File Compression Question

[Hugh Brown]

if you compress the files individually, you can also use zless to browse
them.

Hugh


Tkil wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "David" == David Morris <boru at frii.com> writes:
> 
> David> I have a few directories filled mostly with text files.
> David> Combined, I have about 800 MB to 900 MB of plain text files
> David> that can be compressed down to 200 MB or so at best.
> 
> David> I was just wondering if LINUX offers any way to to compress
> David> files, but still allow read access to the files...though at a
> David> slower rate, of course.  Sort of like the native compression
> David> available NTFS...not the best compression in the world, but it
> David> can at times save a huge amount of space on the hard disk.
> 
> there have been various compressed filesystems made for linux.  do a
> search for "e2compr", for instance; also, "cramfs" has some of these
> attributes, but it's for a very different purpose.  it doesn't look
> like e2compr has been worked on much lately, tho.  :(
> 
> my personal tactic for these is to simply put them into tar.gz files,
> and then use emacs (which can uncompress and un-tar on the fly) to
> browse them when needed.
> 
> it becomes a little more cumbersome to do the equivalent of a "grep"
> in this situation, but it's much more lightweight than any filesystem
> could be.  also, you get much better compression on a single tar file
> than you would on block-sized chunks (as with any sane compressed FS),
> and it will definitely be higher than most small files could compress
> on their own.
> 
> t.
> 
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