A few more examples below. I think lzma isn't the right thing for the archive. p7zip seems much faster, needs a lot less ram and compression is similar.
I didn't measure compression times as I find them somewhat irelevant. A deb is compressed once but downloaded and decompressed a million times. System: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+, 2GHz, 1MB cache, 1GB ram Gzip: 52569460 Bytes Compressing : 19461 mrvn 0 2868 680 R 56.6 0.1 0:02.84 gzip -9 Decompressing: 19395 mrvn 0 3000 512 S 5.0 0.0 0:00.22 gzip -d gunzip-64 < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.gz > /dev/null 2.16s user 0.03s system 98% cpu 2.211 total gunzip-32 < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.gz > /dev/null 2.31s user 0.03s system 94% cpu 2.481 total Bzip2: 41877527 Bytes Compressing : 19487 mrvn 0 11044 6936 R 78.9 0.7 0:04.14 bzip2 Decompressing: 19392 mrvn 0 7264 4048 R 97.9 0.4 0:04.64 bzcat bunzip-64 < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.bz2 > /dev/null 14.55s user 0.14s system 98% cpu 14.900 total bunzip-32 < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.bz2 > /dev/null 18.64s user 0.13s system 98% cpu 19.034 total Lzma: 34306752 Bytes Compressing : 19410 mrvn 0 376m 370m R 97.2 36.9 1:58.33 lzma -9 Decompressing: 19488 mrvn 0 100m 79m R 96.8 7.9 0:03.24 lzma lzma-64 < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.lzma > /dev/null 20.97s user 0.42s system 95% cpu 22.390 total lzma-32 < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.lzma > /dev/null 24.61s user 0.47s system 98% cpu 25.587 total p7zip: 36878710 Bytes Compression : 19505 mrvn 0 76764 49m S 88.8 4.9 0:08.45 7zr Decompression: 19546 mrvn 0 33284 6812 S 96.9 0.7 0:04.48 7zr p7zip-64 -d < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.p7zip > /dev/null 6.38s user 0.41s system 96% cpu 7.010 total p7zip-32 -d < linux-source-2.6.18.tar.p7zip > /dev/null 7.21s user 0.42s system 96% cpu 7.905 total MfG Goswin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]