rpmbuild change compression format

Question

I try to pack some map files for our geoserver in an internal rpm package. For the build part, this is just to copy the files. I think this works as expected. But it takes terribly long to pack those 20GB of images.

I've read that rpm internally compresses the data and that this can be done with several different compression algorithms. But, I don't have a clue which compression my rpm chooses and how I can influence this. I could not find any options for the rpmbuild command, nor for the specfile nor for the general rpm options I can list with rpmbuild --showrc

I´m not very experienced with rpmbuild and specfiles, but after reading lots of man pages and tutorials on rpm.org I have no further ideas.

The specfile I use looks like:

%define debug_package %{nil}

%global mapsversion 0.9
# If this is a snapshot, put the date here and uncomment
#global snapshot_version 20100519

# This is the version in a form acceptable
# an an RPM version string (i.e. no '-')
# Hier werden die Makros definiert.
%global rpmversion %(echo %{mapsversion} | tr '-' '_')
%global pkgversion %{mapsversion}%{?snapshot_version:-SNAPSHOT}
%global pkgname %{name}

Name:           geoserver-maps-part2
Version:        %{rpmversion}
Release:        1%{?dist}
Summary:        Swiss Maps for GeoServer
Group:          Application/ourApp
License:        Copyright (c) 2011
URL:            http://doc.polyalert.local
#Source0:        %{name}-%{version}.tgz
BuildArch:  noarch
BuildRoot:  %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n)
Requires:   geoserver

%define mapshome /opt/geoserver/swisstopo
%define mapssource /home/user/polyalert_env/geoserver/swisstopo

%description
Swiss Maps for GeoServer

%prep

%build
/bin/true

%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{mapshome}
cp -a %{mapssource}/pk100 $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{mapshome}

%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%pre

%post

%preun


%files
%{mapshome}/pk100

%changelog
* Tue Feb 14 2012 user - 1.0
- First version of specfile

I call rpmbuild like this:

rpmbuild -bb --define "_topdir $TOP_DIR" --define "_gpg_name ourkey" --define "_signature gpg" --sign $TOP_DIR/SPECS/$SPEC_FILE_NAME $RPM_BUILD_PARAMETER

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I was working with some RPM stuff today and accidentally stumbled upon the answer for ya!

Put these in your spec file:

%define _source_payload w0.gzdio
%define _binary_payload w0.gzdio

That will still use gzip but pass it -0 for a level, which should just store. On my RPM, it made it grow from 21MB to 76MB, so I'm pretty sure this is your answer!

BTW, I found that in one of the macro files - you can also do bzdio and any number from 0 to 9 to use bzip2. This was on RHEL4; later versions of RPM seem to support more compression options; but again, for what you want, the above should be what you need.