gzexe

GZEXE(1) GZEXE(1)

NAME

gzexe - compress executable files in place


SYNOPSIS
gzexe [ name ... ]

DESCRIPTION

The gzexe utility 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 /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.


OPTIONS
-d Decompress the given executables instead of compressing them.



SEE ALSO

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


CAVEATS
The compressed executable is a shell script. This may create some secu-
rity holes. In particular, the compressed executable relies on the PATH
environment variable to find gzip and some other utilities (tail,
chmod, ln, sleep).


BUGS
gzexe attempts to retain the original file attributes on the compressed
executable, but you may have to fix them manually in some cases, using
chmod or chown.






GZEXE(1)