Once zlibc is installed, simply compress your biggest datafiles using gzip. Your programs are now able to uncompress these files on the fly whenever they need them.
After compressing your datafiles, you also need to change any potential symbolic links pointing to them. Let's suppose that `x' is a symlink to `tstfil':
> echo 'this is a test' >tstfil > ln -s tstfil x > ls -l total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:40 tstfil lrwxrwxrwx 1 alknaff sirac 8 Feb 25 19:40 x -> tstfil
After compressing it, you'll see the following listing:
> gzip tstfil > ls -l total 1 pr--r--r-- 1 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:40 tstfil lrwxrwxrwx 1 alknaff sirac 8 Feb 25 19:40 x -> tstfil
`Tstfil' is now shown as a pipe by zlibc in order to warn programs that they cannot seek in it. Zlibc still shows it with its old name, and you can directly look at its contents:
> cat tstfil this is a test
However, `tstfil' is not yet accessible using the symbolic link:
> cat x cat: x: No such file or directory
In order to make `tstfil' accessible using the link, you have to destroy the link, and remake it:
> rm x /bin/rm: remove `x'? y > ln -s tstfil x > ls -l total 1 pr--r--r-- 1 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:40 tstfil lrwxrwxrwx 1 alknaff sirac 8 Feb 25 19:44 x -> tstfil > cat x this is a test
If you compress datafiles with hard links pointing to them, gzip refuses to compress them.
> echo 'this is a test' >tstfil
> ln tstfil x
> ls -li
total 2
166 -rw-r--r-- 2 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:46 tstfil
166 -rw-r--r-- 2 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:46 x
> gzip tstfil
gzip: tstfil has 1 other link -- unchanged
Thus you need to remove these hard links first, and remake them after compressing the file.
> rm x
/bin/rm: remove `x'? y
> gzip tstfil
> ln tstfil x
> ls -li
total 2
167 pr--r--r-- 2 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:46 tstfil
167 pr--r--r-- 2 alknaff sirac 15 Feb 25 19:46 x
> cat x
this is a test
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