1. NAME▲
bzexe - compress executable files in place
2. SYNOPSIS ▲
bzexe [ name ... ]
3. DESCRIPTION ▲
The bzexeutility 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 ``bzexe /bin/cat'' it will create the following two files:
-
r-
xr-
xr-
x 1
root bin 9644
Feb 11
11
:16
/
bin/
cat
-
r-
xr-
xr-
x 1
bin bin 24576
Nov 23
13
:21
/
bin/
cat~
/bin/cat~ is the original file and /bin/cat is the self-uncompressing executable file. You can remove /bin/cat~ once you are sure that /bin/cat 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 ▲
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 other utilities (tail, chmod, ln, sleep).
7. BUGS ▲
bzexeattempts to retain the original file attributes on the compressed executable, but you may have to fix them manually in some cases, using chmodor chown.