From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jul 21 00:50:20 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF38D16A41F for ; Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:50:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mail-out4.apple.com (mail-out4.apple.com [17.254.13.23]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C904B13C457 for ; Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:50:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from relay5.apple.com (relay5.apple.com [17.128.113.35]) by mail-out4.apple.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B58C9C97F7E; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:50:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay5.apple.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by relay5.apple.com (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id A337729C17B; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:50:20 -0700 (PDT) X-AuditID: 11807123-a7f42bb000000b34-b7-46a1584c3023 Received: from [17.214.13.96] (cswiger1.apple.com [17.214.13.96]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by relay5.apple.com (Apple SCV relay) with ESMTP id 9346E30400C; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:50:20 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20070721103710.1e16a319@localhost> References: <20070720220337.GA87174@ns.umpquanet.com> <20070721103710.1e16a319@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <2BF10D44-4FB5-4F07-B515-553BC705B900@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Chuck Swiger Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:50:20 -0700 To: Norberto Meijome X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2) X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Cc: James Long , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: speed of bzip2 versus gzip X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:50:21 -0000 On Jul 20, 2007, at 5:37 PM, Norberto Meijome wrote: >> Is it normal for bzip2 to be significantly slower than gzip? >> If not, where can I look for things that might be causing >> "bzip2 --fast" to take 50-60 times longer to compress a >> (sendmail log) file than gzip? > > i never measured it to see if it is 50-60 times slower, but yes, > gzip blows > bzip2 out of the water on speed. I wanted to use bzip2 to compress > multi-GB > weblog files, but gzip beat it my miles, and bzip2 wasn't THAT much > better @ > compressing it to make it worth it. Thanks for the feedback, Norberto. Of course, it all depends on what your priorities are, too-- if what you want is a final tarball which is being mirrored and downloaded frequently, then your goal is to obtain the absolute best compression, and how much CPU --best takes isn't important. Comparing the default (-5 compression?) of gzip to bzip2 would probably be more reasonable if you care about reasonably timely compression. -- -Chuck