[CentOS] Tar so slow! Is there anything faster?

[Kwan Lowe]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Arun Khan <knura9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 15:54, Jerry Franz <jfranz at freerun.com> wrote:
>>> tar is normally screaming fast unless you use bzip2 compression (or gzip
>>> compression on an underpowered CPU).
>>>
>>> Provide details: What are you tarring, how are you invoking tar, what
>>> hardware are you running on (hard drive types, cpu type, etc).
>>>
>>
>> Thanks, Jerry, I was in fact using bzip2:
>> $ tar -cjf dcl-2010-12-07.tbz dcl-2010-12-07/
>
> bzip2 will slow down the operation.  If you don't really need
> compressed than simply do "tar cf  <tar file>  <dir/file list>"

It would be interesting to see how compression would do if pushing
across a slow link :).

There are many times where I run across the OP's scenario, but often I
need to push a tar across a relatively slow link.  bzip is slower to
compress, but may make up the difference in transfer time.  Maybe time
to fire up maxima and find that sweet spot :D