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cli-tarHow can I use tar gzip to create a multithreaded archive?


Tar gzip can be used to create a multithreaded archive by passing the -I or --use-compress-program option to the tar command. This option allows you to specify an external compression program such as pigz which is a multithreaded gzip implementation.

For example, to create a tar gzip archive using 4 threads you would run the following command:

tar -cvf archive.tar.gz -I pigz -p 4 <files-to-archive>

This command will create an archive named archive.tar.gz using 4 threads to compress the specified <files-to-archive>.

The parts of this command are:

  • tar - The tar command which is used to create archives
  • -cvf - Options to create a tar archive (-c), use a file as the archive (-f) and create the archive in verbose mode (-v)
  • archive.tar.gz - The name of the archive to be created
  • -I pigz - Option to specify an external compression program (in this case pigz)
  • -p 4 - Option to specify the number of threads to use for compression (in this case 4)
  • <files-to-archive> - The files to be archived

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