gzexe(1)

GZEXE(1)                 USER COMMANDS                   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  exam-
     ple  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  security  holes. In particular, the compressed execut-
     able 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.

Unix System Laboratories  Last change:                          1