lrzip compressed archive
File type: Archive and compressed file
An .lrz file is a compressed file created by the lrzip utility.
It may contain a compressed individual file or a tar archive containing multiple files.
File type category:
Archive and compressed file
Date updated: October 12, 2026
Record marked as obsolete and not updated for a long time.
The open-source lrzip utility creates the .lrz compressed archive format, designed for very large files. It is based on the RZIP utility, which performs long-range redundancy reduction before the data is compressed.
The format is produced and extracted by the lrzip command-line utility. When multiple files are compressed as one archive, they are normally first combined into a tar archive and then compressed with lrzip.
lrzip was developed primarily for Linux and other Unix-like systems. The format is now considered obsolete, so current archive applications may not support it directly.
Open an .lrz file with the lrzip utility and use its decompression option to restore the original file or tar archive. On Linux and other Unix-like systems, this is normally done from the command line.
If the result is a tar archive, extract that archive separately with a tar utility.
An .lrz file cannot usually be converted directly to another archive format. Decompress it with lrzip first, then create a new archive using a utility that supports the required format.
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