GZEXE(1)                             General Commands Manual                             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 /usr/bin/gdb'' it will create the following two files:
           -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1026675 Jun  7 13:53 /usr/bin/gdb
           -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 2304524 May 30 13:02 /usr/bin/gdb~
       /usr/bin/gdb~  is  the original file and /usr/bin/gdb is the self-uncompressing executable
       file.  You can remove /usr/bin/gdb~ once you are sure that /usr/bin/gdb 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 executable relies on the PATH environment variable to find gzip
       and some standard utilities (basename, chmod, ln, mkdir, mktemp, rm, sleep, and tail).

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)