Install and Use 7-Zip on Ubuntu 20.04

In this tutorial, we want to teach you to Install and Use 7-zip on Ubuntu 20.04.

7-Zip is a file archive with the highest compression ratio. It works on the 7z format, which is the successor to the zip format. This format enables it to achieve more than a 1350 percent compression ratio compared to the zip format.

7-Zip consists of an integrated decompressor, and archiver, and can work with 7z, zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, and tar formats. If you are looking for file compression and management product, then 7-Zip is one of the first options you should consider.

what you read in this post?

How To Install and Use 7-Zip on Ubuntu 20.04

How To Install and Use 7-Zip on Ubuntu 20.04

To install 7-zip, you must log in to your server as a non-root user with sudo privileges. To do this, you can follow our guide the Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 20.04.

Now follow the steps bow to complete this guide.

Installing 7-Zip on Ubuntu 20.04

By default, 7-Zip is available in the default Ubuntu repository. First, update and upgrade your local package index with the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Then, use the command below to install 7-Zip on your server:

sudo apt install p7zip-full

That’s it. By using a single command you have installed 7-Zip on your server.

How To Use 7-Zip

The general syntax of 7-Zip is like this:

7z <command> [<switches>...] <archive_name> [<file_names>...]
[<@listfiles...>]

You can find the switches and commands for 7-Zip with the following command on Ubuntu 20.04:

7z -h

Output
<Commands>
a : Add files to archive
b : Benchmark
d : Delete files from archive
e : Extract files from archive (without using directory names)
h : Calculate hash values for files
i : Show information about supported formats
l : List contents of archive
rn : Rename files in archive
t : Test integrity of archive
u : Update files to archive
x : eXtract files with full paths

<Switches>
-- : Stop switches parsing
-ai[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : Include archives
-ax[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : eXclude archives
-ao{a|s|t|u} : set Overwrite mode
-an : disable archive_name field
-bb[0-3] : set output log level
-bd : disable progress indicator
-bs{o|e|p}{0|1|2} : set output stream for output/error/progress line
-bt : show execution time statistics
-i[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : Include filenames
-m{Parameters} : set compression Method
-mmt[N] : set number of CPU threads
-o{Directory} : set Output directory
-p{Password} : set Password
-r[-|0] : Recurse subdirectories
-sa{a|e|s} : set Archive name mode
-scc{UTF-8|WIN|DOS} : set charset for for console input/output
-scs{UTF-8|UTF-16LE|UTF-16BE|WIN|DOS|{id}} : set charset for list files
-scrc[CRC32|CRC64|SHA1|SHA256|*] : set hash function for x, e, h commands
-sdel : delete files after compression
-seml[.] : send archive by email
-sfx[{name}] : Create SFX archive
-si[{name}] : read data from stdin
-slp : set Large Pages mode
-slt : show technical information for l (List) command
-snh : store hard links as links
-snl : store symbolic links as links
-sni : store NT security information
-sns[-] : store NTFS alternate streams
-so : write data to stdout
-spd : disable wildcard matching for file names
-spe : eliminate duplication of root folder for extract command
-spf : use fully qualified file paths
-ssc[-] : set sensitive case mode
-ssw : compress shared files
-stl : set archive timestamp from the most recently modified file
-stm{HexMask} : set CPU thread affinity mask (hexadecimal number)
-stx{Type} : exclude archive type
-t{Type} : Set type of archive
-u[-][p#][q#][r#][x#][y#][z#][!newArchiveName] : Update options
-v{Size}[b|k|m|g] : Create volumes
-w[{path}] : assign Work directory. Empty path means a temporary directory
-x[r[-|0]]{@listfile|!wildcard} : eXclude filenames
-y : assume Yes on all queries

Let’s see some examples of using 7-Zip.

To add files to the archive, you can use the 7z -a command on Ubuntu 20.04, for example: