1. NAME▲

gzexe - compress executable files in place

2. SYNOPSIS ▲

gzexe "name . . ."

3. DESCRIPTION ▲

The gzexeutility allows you to compress executables in place and have them automatically uncompress and execute when you run them (at a penalty in performance). For example if you execute ``gzexe /usr/bin/gdb'' it will create the following two files:

 
Sélectionnez
    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1026675 Jun  7 13:53 /usr/bin/gdb
    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 2304524 May 30 13:02 /usr/bin/gdb~

/usr/bin/gdb~ is the original file and /usr/bin/gdb is the self-uncompressing executable file. You can remove /usr/bin/gdb~ once you are sure that /usr/bin/gdb works properly.

This utility is most useful on systems with very small disks.

4. OPTIONS ▲

-d

    Decompress the given executables instead of compressing them.

5. SEE ALSO ▲

gzip(1), znew(1), zmore(1), zcmp(1), zforce(1)

6. CAVEATS ▲

The compressed executable is a shell script. This may create some security holes. In particular, the compressed executable relies on the PATH environment variable to find gzipand some standard utilities ( basename , chmod , ln , mkdir , mktemp , rm , sleep , and tail ).

7. BUGS ▲

gzexeattempts to retain the original file attributes on the compressed executable, but you may have to fix them manually in some cases, using chmodor chown .