p7zip

Overview

p7zip is a port of the 7-zip compression tool to Linux. The 7za executable is installed, which is a stand-alone executable (7za handles less archive formats than 7z).

Version 16.02 is installed on the CSF.

DO NOT USE the 7-zip format for backup purpose on Linux/Unix because 7-zip does not store the owner/group of the file. Please use tar first to archive the files and then you may compress the tar file (see below). However we generally recommend using 7za only for extracting archives you may have been given or downloaded.

Restrictions on use

There are no restrictions on accessing this software on the CSF.

Set up procedure

We now recommend loading modulefiles within your jobscript so that you have a full record of how the job was run. See the example jobscript below for how to do this. Alternatively, you may load modulefiles on the login node and let the job inherit these settings.

Load one of the following modulefiles:

module load tools/bintools/p7zip/16.02

Running the application

Please do not run 7za on the login node. Jobs should be submitted to the compute nodes via batch. You may run the following command to get a list of flags/switches accepted by 7za:

7za -h

Serial batch job submission

Create a batch submission script (which will load the modulefile in the jobscript), for example:

#!/bin/bash --login
#$ -cwd             # Job will run from the current directory
                    # NO -V line - we load modulefiles in the jobscript

module load tools/bintools/p7zip/16.02

# To list the contents of an archive:
7za l archive.7z

# To extract (uncompress) an archive:
7za x archive.7z

# To create (add to) an archive by first tar-ing the files to preserve owner/group:
tar cf - directoryname | 7za a -si directoryname.tar.7z

# To extract (uncompress) an archive created with the above tar method:
7za x -so directoryname.tar.7z | tar xf -

Submit the jobscript using:

qsub scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

Further info

Updates

None.

Last modified on December 4, 2023 at 6:45 pm by George Leaver