ZSTD compression level with tar
I've been using zstd more and more for general compression. Using it with tar is pretty straight forward:
tar -I zstd -cvpf /tmp/etc.tar.zst /etcThis does not allow you to set the compression ratio however. After some digging I found an environment variable that controls the default compression level. If you run tar like this you can change the default compression level.
ZSTD_CLEVEL=19 tar -I zstd -cvpf /tmp/etc.tar.zst /etcGZip has a similar variable, but it will allow any command line variable (not just compression ratio).
GZIP=-9 tar -cvzpf /tmp/etc.tar.gz /etcUpdate: You can also use ZSTD_NBTHREADS to use more CPU cores.
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December 11th 2020 - Tudor Georgescu
It has to be:
ZSTD_CLEVEL=19 tar -I zstd -cvpf /tmp/etc.tar.gz /etcOtherwise, it will be saved to the file -I.
April 15th 2021 - Rishabh Arya
We can specify the compression level within the command itself:
tar -I "zstd -19" -cvpf /tmp/etc.tar.zst /etc
October 28th 2024 - A Davis
The use of -p here is superfluous -- it only applies to extraction of the archive.