Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
UPX(1)									  UPX(1)

NAME
     upx - compress or expand executable files

SYNOPSIS
     upx [ command ] [ options ] filename...

ABSTRACT
			 The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
	Copyright (c) 1996-2026 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar & John Reiser
				https://upx.github.io

     UPX  is a portable, extendable, high-performance executable packer for sev-
     eral different executable formats. It achieves an excellent compression ra-
     tio and offers *very* fast decompression. Your executables suffer no memory
     overhead or other drawbacks for most of the formats supported,  because  of
     in-place decompression.

DISCLAIMER
     UPX comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details see the file COPYING.

     Please report all problems or suggestions to the authors. Thanks.

SECURITY CONTEXT
     IMPORTANT NOTE: UPX inherits the security context of any files it handles.

     This  means  that packing, unpacking, or even testing or listing a file re-
     quires the same security considerations as actually executing the file.

     Use UPX on trusted files only!

DESCRIPTION
     UPX is a versatile executable packer with the following features:

       - secure: as UPX is documented Open Source since many years any relevant
	   Security/Antivirus software is able to peek inside UPX compressed
	   apps to verify them

       - excellent compression ratio: typically compresses better than Zip,
	   use UPX to decrease the size of your distribution !

       - very fast decompression: more than 500 MB/sec on any reasonably modern
	   machine

       - no memory overhead for your compressed executables for most of the
	   supported formats because of in-place decompression

       - safe: you can list, test and unpack your executables.
	   Also, a checksum of both the compressed and uncompressed file is
	   maintained internally.

       - universal: UPX can pack a number of executable formats, including
	   Windows programs and DLLs, macOS apps and Linux executables

       - portable: UPX is written in portable endian-neutral C++

       - extendable: because of the class layout it's very easy to support
	   new executable formats or add new compression algorithms

       - free: UPX is distributed with full source code under the GNU General
	   Public License v2+, with special exceptions granting the free usage
	   for commercial programs

     You probably understand now why  we  call	UPX  the  "ultimate"  executable
     packer.

COMMANDS
   Compress
     This  is the default operation, eg. upx yourfile.exe will compress the file
     specified on the command line.

   Decompress
     All UPX supported file formats can be unpacked using  the	-d  switch,  eg.
     upx -d yourfile.exe will uncompress the file you've just compressed.

   Test
     The -t command tests the integrity of the compressed and uncompressed data,
     eg. upx -t yourfile.exe check whether your file can be safely decompressed.
     Note,  that  this	command doesn't check the whole file, only the part that
     will be uncompressed during program execution. This means that  you  should
     not use this command instead of a virus checker.

   List
     The -l command prints out some information about the compressed files spec-
     ified  on	the command line as parameters, eg upx -l yourfile.exe shows the
     compressed / uncompressed size and the compression ratio of yourfile.exe.

OPTIONS
     -q: be quiet, suppress warnings

     -q -q (or -qq): be very quiet, suppress errors

     -q -q -q (or -qqq): produce no output at all

     --help: prints the help

     --version: print the version of UPX

     --exact: when compressing, require to be able to get a byte-identical  file
     after  decompression with option -d. [NOTE: this is work in progress and is
     not supported for all formats yet. If you do care, as a workaround you  can
     compress  and  then decompress your program a first time - any further com-
     press-decompress steps should then yield byte-identical results as compared
     to the first decompressed version.]

     -k: keep backup files

     -o file: write output to file

     [ ...more docs need to be written... - type `upx --help' for now ]

COMPRESSION LEVELS & TUNING
     UPX offers ten different compression levels from -1 to -9, and --best.  The
     default compression level is -8 for files smaller than 512 KiB, and -7 oth-
     erwise.

     *	 Compression levels 1, 2 and 3 are pretty fast.

     *	 Compression levels 4, 5 and 6 achieve a good time/ratio performance.

     *	 Compression levels 7, 8 and 9 favor compression ratio over speed.

     *	 Compression level --best may take a long time.

     Note that compression level --best can be somewhat slow  for  large  files,
     but  you  definitely  should  use it when releasing a final version of your
     program.

     Quick info for achieving the best compression ratio:

     *	 Try  upx  --brute  --no-lzma  myfile.exe  or  even  upx   --ultra-brute
	 --no-lzma myfile.exe.

     *	 The option --lzma enables LZMA compression, which compresses better but
	 is *significantly slower* at decompression. You probably do not want to
	 use it for large files.

	 (Note	that  --lzma  is  automatically  enabled  by  --all-methods  and
	 --brute, use --no-lzma to override.)

     *	 Try if --overlay=strip works.

     *	 For win32/pe programs there's --strip-relocs=0. See notes below.

OVERLAY HANDLING OPTIONS
     Info: An "overlay" means auxiliary data attached after the logical  end  of
     an  executable,  and it often contains application specific data (this is a
     common practice to avoid an extra data file, though it would be  better  to
     use resource sections).

     UPX  handles  overlays  like  many  other	executable packers do: it simply
     copies the overlay after the compressed image. This works with some  files,
     but  doesn't work with others, depending on how an application actually ac-
     cesses this overlaid data.

       --overlay=copy	 Copy any extra data attached to the file. [DEFAULT]

       --overlay=strip	 Strip any overlay from the program instead of
			 copying it. Be warned, this may make the compressed
			 program crash or otherwise unusable.

       --overlay=skip	 Refuse to compress any program which has an overlay.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE
     The environment variable UPX can hold a set of  default  options  for  UPX.
     These options are interpreted first and can be overwritten by explicit com-
     mand line parameters.  For example:

	 for DOS/Windows:   set UPX=-9 --compress-icons#0
	 for sh/ksh/zsh:    UPX="-9 --compress-icons=0"; export UPX
	 for csh/tcsh:	    setenv UPX "-9 --compress-icons=0"

     Under DOS/Windows you must use '#' instead of '=' when setting the environ-
     ment variable because of a COMMAND.COM limitation.

     Not  all  of  the	options are valid in the environment variable - UPX will
     tell you.

     You can explicitly use the --no-env option to ignore the environment  vari-
     able.

NOTES FOR THE SUPPORTED EXECUTABLE FORMATS
   NOTES FOR ATARI/TOS
     This  is  the  executable	format used by the Atari ST/TT, a Motorola 68000
     based personal computer which was popular in the late '80s. Support of this
     format is only because of nostalgic feelings of  one  of  the  authors  and
     serves  no  practical purpose :-).  See https://freemint.github.io for more
     info.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.
     All debug information will be stripped, though.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR BVMLINUZ/I386
     Same as vmlinuz/i386.

   NOTES FOR DOS/COM
     Obviously UPX won't work with executables that want to read data from them-
     selves (like some commandline utilities that ship with Win95/98/ME).

     Compressed programs only work on a 286+.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.

     Maximum uncompressed size: ~65100 bytes.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --8086		   Create an executable that works on any 8086 CPU.

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --all-filters	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available preprocessing filters. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default filter gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR DOS/EXE
     dos/exe stands for all "normal" 16-bit DOS executables.

     Obviously UPX won't work with executables that want to read data from them-
     selves (like some command line utilities that ship with Win95/98/ME).

     Compressed programs only work on a 286+.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --8086		   Create an executable that works on any 8086 CPU.

       --no-reloc	   Use no relocation records in the exe header.

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR DOS/SYS
     Compressed programs only work on a 286+.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.

     Maximum uncompressed size: ~65350 bytes.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --8086		   Create an executable that works on any 8086 CPU.

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --all-filters	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available preprocessing filters. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default filter gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR DJGPP2/COFF
     First of all, it is recommended to use UPX *instead* of  strip.  strip  has
     the  very bad habit of replacing your stub with its own (outdated) version.
     Additionally UPX corrects a bug/feature in strip v2.8.x: it will fix the  4
     KiB alignment of the stub.

     UPX includes the full functionality of stubify. This means it will automat-
     ically stubify your COFF files. Use the option --coff to disable this func-
     tionality (see below).

     UPX automatically handles Allegro packfiles.

     The DLM format (a rather exotic shared library extension) is not supported.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.
     All debug information and trailing garbage will be stripped, though.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --coff		   Produce COFF output instead of EXE. By default
			   UPX keeps your current stub.

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --all-filters	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available preprocessing filters. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default filter gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR LINUX [general]
     Introduction

       Linux/386 support in UPX consists of 3 different executable formats,
       one optimized for ELF executables ("linux/elf386"), one optimized
       for shell scripts ("linux/sh386"), and one generic format
       ("linux/386").

       We will start with a general discussion first, but please
       also read the relevant docs for each of the individual formats.

       Also, there is special support for bootable kernels - see the
       description of the vmlinuz/386 format.

     General user's overview

       Running a compressed executable program trades less space on a
       ``permanent'' storage medium (such as a hard disk, floppy disk,
       CD-ROM, flash memory, EPROM, etc.) for more space in one or more
       ``temporary'' storage media (such as RAM, swap space, /tmp, etc.).
       Running a compressed executable also requires some additional CPU
       cycles to generate the compressed executable in the first place,
       and to decompress it at each invocation.

       How much space is traded?  It depends on the executable, but many
       programs save 30% to 50% of permanent disk space.  How much CPU
       overhead is there?  Again, it depends on the executable, but
       decompression speed generally is at least many megabytes per second,
       and frequently is limited by the speed of the underlying disk
       or network I/O.

       Depending on the statistics of usage and access, and the relative
       speeds of CPU, RAM, swap space, /tmp, and file system storage, then
       invoking and running a compressed executable can be faster than
       directly running the corresponding uncompressed program.
       The operating system might perform fewer expensive I/O operations
       to invoke the compressed program.  Paging to or from swap space
       or /tmp might be faster than paging from the general file system.
       ``Medium-sized'' programs which access about 1/3 to 1/2 of their
       stored program bytes can do particularly well with compression.
       Small programs tend not to benefit as much because the absolute
       savings is less.  Big programs tend not to benefit proportionally
       because each invocation may use only a small fraction of the program,
       yet UPX decompresses the entire program before invoking it.
       But in environments where disk or flash memory storage is limited,
       then compression may win anyway.

       Currently, executables compressed by UPX do not share RAM at runtime
       in the way that executables mapped from a file system do.  As a
       result, if the same program is run simultaneously by more than one
       process, then using the compressed version will require more RAM and/or
       swap space.  So, shell programs (bash, csh, etc.)  and ``make''
       might not be good candidates for compression.

       UPX recognizes three executable formats for Linux: Linux/elf386,
       Linux/sh386, and Linux/386.  Linux/386 is the most generic format;
       it accommodates any file that can be executed.  At runtime, the UPX
       decompression stub re-creates in /tmp a copy of the original file,
       and then the copy is (re-)executed with the same arguments.
       ELF binary executables prefer the Linux/elf386 format by default,
       because UPX decompresses them directly into RAM, uses only one
       exec, does not use space in /tmp, and does not use /proc.
       Shell scripts where the underlying shell accepts a ``-c'' argument
       can use the Linux/sh386 format.	UPX decompresses the shell script
       into low memory, then maps the shell and passes the entire text of the
       script as an argument with a leading ``-c''.

     General benefits:

       - UPX can compress all executables, be it AOUT, ELF, libc4, libc5,
	 libc6, Shell/Perl/Python/... scripts, standalone Java .class
	 binaries, or whatever...
	 All scripts and programs will work just as before.

       - Compressed programs are completely self-contained. No need for
	 any external program.

       - UPX keeps your original program untouched. This means that
	 after decompression you will have a byte-identical version,
	 and you can use UPX as a file compressor just like gzip.
	 [ Note that UPX maintains a checksum of the file internally,
	   so it is indeed a reliable alternative. ]

       - As the stub only uses syscalls and isn't linked against libc it
	 should run under any Linux configuration that can run ELF
	 binaries.

       - For the same reason compressed executables should run under
	 FreeBSD and other systems which can run Linux binaries.
	 [ Please send feedback on this topic ]

     General drawbacks:

       - It is not advisable to compress programs which usually have many
	 instances running (like `sh' or `make') because the common segments of
	 compressed programs won't be shared any longer between different
	 processes.

       - `ldd' and `size' won't show anything useful because all they
	 see is the statically linked stub.  Since version 0.82 the section
	 headers are stripped from the UPX stub and `size' doesn't even
	 recognize the file format.  The file patches/patch-elfcode.h has a
	 patch to fix this bug in `size' and other programs which use GNU BFD.

     General notes:

       - As UPX leaves your original program untouched it is advantageous
	 to strip it before compression.

       - If you compress a script you will lose platform independence -
	 this could be a problem if you are using NFS mounted disks.

       - Compression of suid, guid and sticky-bit programs is rejected
	 because of possible security implications.

       - For the same reason there is no sense in making any compressed
	 program suid.

       - Obviously UPX won't work with executables that want to read data
	 from themselves. E.g., this might be a problem for Perl scripts
	 which access their __DATA__ lines.

       - In case of internal errors the stub will abort with exitcode 127.
	 Typical reasons for this to happen are that the program has somehow
	 been modified after compression.
	 Running `strace -o strace.log compressed_file' will tell you more.

   NOTES FOR LINUX/ELF386
     Please read the general Linux description first.

     The linux/elf386 format decompresses directly into RAM, uses only one exec,
     does not use space in /tmp, and does not use /proc.

     Linux/elf386 is automatically selected for Linux ELF executables.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.

     How it works:

       For ELF executables, UPX decompresses directly to memory, simulating
       the mapping that the operating system kernel uses during exec(),
       including the PT_INTERP program interpreter (if any).
       The brk() is set by a special PT_LOAD segment in the compressed
       executable itself.  UPX then wipes the stack clean except for
       arguments, environment variables, and Elf_auxv entries (this is
       required by bugs in the startup code of /lib/ld-linux.so as of
       May 2000), and transfers control to the program interpreter or
       the e_entry address of the original executable.

       The UPX stub is about 1700 bytes long, partly written in assembler
       and only uses kernel syscalls. It is not linked against any libc.

     Specific drawbacks:

       - For linux/elf386 and linux/sh386 formats, you will be relying on
	 RAM and swap space to hold all of the decompressed program during
	 the lifetime of the process.  If you already use most of your swap
	 space, then you may run out.  A system that is "out of memory"
	 can become fragile.  Many programs do not react gracefully when
	 malloc() returns 0.  With newer Linux kernels, the kernel
	 may decide to kill some processes to regain memory, and you
	 may not like the kernel's choice of which to kill.  Running
	 /usr/bin/top is one way to check on the usage of swap space.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       (none)

   NOTES FOR LINUX/SH386
     Please read the general Linux description first.

     Shell  scripts  where the underling shell accepts a ``-c'' argument can use
     the Linux/sh386 format.  UPX decompresses the shell script into low memory,
     then maps the shell and passes the entire text of the script as an argument
     with a leading ``-c''.  It does not use space in /tmp,  and  does	not  use
     /proc.

     Linux/sh386  is  automatically  selected for shell scripts that use a known
     shell.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.

     How it works:

       For shell script executables (files beginning with "#!/" or "#! /")
       where the shell is known to accept "-c <command>", UPX decompresses
       the file into low memory, then maps the shell (and its PT_INTERP),
       and passes control to the shell with the entire decompressed file
       as the argument after "-c".  Known shells are sh, ash, bash, bsh, csh,
       ksh, tcsh, pdksh.  Restriction: UPX cannot use this method
       for shell scripts which use the one optional string argument after
       the shell name in the script (example: "#! /bin/sh option3\n".)

       The UPX stub is about 1700 bytes long, partly written in assembler
       and only uses kernel syscalls. It is not linked against any libc.

     Specific drawbacks:

       - For linux/elf386 and linux/sh386 formats, you will be relying on
	 RAM and swap space to hold all of the decompressed program during
	 the lifetime of the process.  If you already use most of your swap
	 space, then you may run out.  A system that is "out of memory"
	 can become fragile.  Many programs do not react gracefully when
	 malloc() returns 0.  With newer Linux kernels, the kernel
	 may decide to kill some processes to regain memory, and you
	 may not like the kernel's choice of which to kill.  Running
	 /usr/bin/top is one way to check on the usage of swap space.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       (none)

   NOTES FOR LINUX/386
     Please read the general Linux description first.

     The generic linux/386 format decompresses to /tmp and needs /proc file sys-
     tem support. It starts the decompressed program via the execve() syscall.

     Linux/386 is only selected if the specialized linux/elf386 and  linux/sh386
     won't recognize a file.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.

     How it works:

       For files which are not ELF and not a script for a known "-c" shell,
       UPX uses kernel execve(), which first requires decompressing to a
       temporary file in the file system.  Interestingly -
       because of the good memory management of the Linux kernel - this
       often does not introduce a noticeable delay, and in fact there
       will be no disk access at all if you have enough free memory as
       the entire process takes places within the file system buffers.

       A compressed executable consists of the UPX stub and an overlay
       which contains the original program in a compressed form.

       The UPX stub is a statically linked ELF executable and does
       the following at program startup:

	 1) decompress the overlay to a temporary location in /tmp
	 2) open the temporary file for reading
	 3) try to delete the temporary file and start (execve)
	    the uncompressed program in /tmp using /proc/<pid>/fd/X as
	    attained by step 2)
	 4) if that fails, fork off a subprocess to clean up and
	    start the program in /tmp in the meantime

       The UPX stub is about 1700 bytes long, partly written in assembler
       and only uses kernel syscalls. It is not linked against any libc.

     Specific drawbacks:

       - You need additional free disk space for the uncompressed program
	 in your /tmp directory. This program is deleted immediately after
	 decompression, but you still need it for the full execution time
	 of the program.

       - You must have /proc file system support as the stub wants to open
	 /proc/<pid>/exe and needs /proc/<pid>/fd/X. This also means that you
	 cannot compress programs that are used during the boot sequence
	 before /proc is mounted.

       - Utilities like `top' will display numerical values in the process
	 name field. This is because Linux computes the process name from
	 the first argument of the last execve syscall (which is typically
	 something like /proc/<pid>/fd/3).

       - Because of temporary decompression to disk the decompression speed
	 is not as fast as with the other executable formats. Still, I can see
	 no noticeable delay when starting programs like my ~3 MiB emacs (which
	 is less than 1 MiB when compressed :-).

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --force-execve	   Force the use of the generic linux/386 "execve"
			   format, i.e. do not try the linux/elf386 and
			   linux/sh386 formats.

   NOTES FOR PS1/EXE
     This  is the executable format used by the Sony PlayStation (PSone), a MIPS
     R3000 based gaming console which is popular since the late  '90s.	 Support
     of this format is very similar to the Atari one, because of nostalgic feel-
     ings of one of the authors.

     Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression,
     until further notice.

     Maximum uncompressed size: ~1.89 / ~7.60 MiB.

     Notes:

       - UPX creates as default a suitable executable for CD-Mastering
	 and console transfer. For a CD-Master main executable you could also try
	 the special option "--boot-only" as described below.
	 It has been reported that upx packed executables are fully compatible with
	 the Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2, PStwo) and Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) in
	 Sony PlayStation (PSone) emulation mode.

       - Normally the packed files use the same memory areas like the uncompressed
	 versions, so they will not override other memory areas while unpacking.
	 If this isn't possible UPX will abort showing a 'packed data overlap'
	 error. With the "--force" option UPX will relocate the loading address
	 for the packed file, but this isn't a real problem if it is a single or
	 the main executable.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --8-bit		   Uses 8 bit size compression [default: 32 bit]

       --8mib-ram	   PSone has 8 MiB ram available [default: 2 MiB]

       --boot-only	   This format is for main exes and CD-Mastering only !
			   It may slightly improve the compression ratio,
			   decompression routines are faster than default ones.
			   But it cannot be used for console transfer !

       --no-align	   This option disables CD mode 2 data sector format
			   alignment. May slightly improves the compression ratio,
			   but the compressed executable will not boot from a CD.
			   Use it for console transfer only !

   NOTES FOR RTM32/PE and ARM/PE
     Same as win32/pe.

   NOTES FOR TMT/ADAM
     This format is used by the TMT Pascal compiler - see http://www.tmt.com/ .

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --all-filters	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available preprocessing filters. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default filter gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR VMLINUZ/386
     The  vmlinuz/386  and  bvmlinuz/386 formats take a gzip-compressed bootable
     Linux kernel image ("vmlinuz", "zImage", "bzImage"), gzip-decompress it and
     re-compress it with the UPX compression method.

     vmlinuz/386 is completely unrelated to the other Linux executable	formats,
     and it does not share any of their drawbacks.

     Notes:

       - Be sure that "vmlinuz/386" or "bvmlinuz/386" is displayed
       during compression - otherwise a wrong executable format
       may have been used, and the kernel won't boot.

     Benefits:

       - Better compression (but note that the kernel was already compressed,
       so the improvement is not as large as with other formats).
       Still, the bytes saved may be essential for special needs like
       boot disks.

	  For example, this is what I get for my 2.2.16 kernel:
	     1589708  vmlinux
	      641073  bzImage	     [original]
	      560755  bzImage.upx    [compressed by "upx -9"]

       - Much faster decompression at kernel boot time (but kernel
	 decompression speed is not really an issue these days).

     Drawbacks:

       (none)

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --all-filters	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available preprocessing filters. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default filter gives the best results anyway.

   NOTES FOR WATCOM/LE
     UPX has been successfully tested with the following extenders:
       DOS4G, DOS4GW, PMODE/W, DOS32a, CauseWay.
       The WDOS/X extender is partly supported (for details
       see the file bugs BUGS).

     DLLs and the LX format are not supported.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

       --le		   Produce an unbound LE output instead of
			   keeping the current stub.

   NOTES FOR WIN32/PE
     The  PE  support  in  UPX is quite stable now, but probably there are still
     some incompatibilities with some files.

     Because of the way UPX (and other packers for this format) works,	you  can
     see  increased memory usage of your compressed files because the whole pro-
     gram is loaded into memory at startup.  If you start several  instances  of
     huge  compressed programs you're wasting memory because the common segments
     of the program won't get shared across the instances.  On the other hand if
     you're compressing only smaller programs, or running only one  instance  of
     larger programs, then this penalty is smaller, but it's still there.

     If  you're  running executables from network, then compressed programs will
     load faster, and require less bandwidth during execution.

     DLLs are supported. But UPX compressed DLLs can not share common  data  and
     code when they got used by multiple applications. So compressing msvcrt.dll
     is  a  waste of memory, but compressing the dll plugins of a particular ap-
     plication may be a better idea.

     Screensavers are supported, with the restriction that the filename must end
     with ".scr" (as screensavers are handled slightly different than normal exe
     files).

     UPX compressed PE files have some minor memory overhead (usually in the  10
     -	30  KiB  range)  which	can  be seen by specifying the "-i" command line
     switch during compression.

     Extra options available for this executable format:

      --compress-exports=0 Don't compress the export section.
			   Use this if you plan to run the compressed
			   program under Wine.
      --compress-exports=1 Compress the export section. [DEFAULT]
			   Compression of the export section can improve the
			   compression ratio quite a bit but may not work
			   with all programs (like winword.exe).
			   UPX never compresses the export section of a DLL
			   regardless of this option.

       --compress-icons=0  Don't compress any icons.
       --compress-icons=1  Compress all but the first icon.
       --compress-icons=2  Compress all icons which are not in the
			   first icon directory. [DEFAULT]
       --compress-icons=3  Compress all icons.

       --compress-resources=0  Don't compress any resources at all.

       --keep-resource=list Don't compress resources specified by the list.
			   The members of the list are separated by commas.
			   A list member has the following format: I<type[/name]>.
			   I<Type> is the type of the resource. Standard types
			   must be specified as decimal numbers, user types can be
			   specified by decimal IDs or strings. I<Name> is the
			   identifier of the resource. It can be a decimal number
			   or a string. For example:

			   --keep-resource=2/MYBITMAP,5,6/12345

			   UPX won't compress the named bitmap resource "MYBITMAP",
			   it leaves every dialog (5) resource uncompressed, and
			   it won't touch the string table resource with identifier
			   12345.

       --force		   Force compression even when there is an
			   unexpected value in a header field.
			   Use with care.

       --strip-relocs=0    Don't strip relocation records.
       --strip-relocs=1    Strip relocation records. [DEFAULT]
			   This option only works on executables with base
			   address greater or equal to 0x400000. Usually the
			   compressed files becomes smaller, but some files
			   may become larger. Note that the resulting file will
			   not work under Windows 3.x (Win32s).
			   UPX never strips relocations from a DLL
			   regardless of this option.

       --all-methods	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available compression methods. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default method gives the best results anyway.

       --all-filters	   Compress the program several times, using all
			   available preprocessing filters. This may improve
			   the compression ratio in some cases, but usually
			   the default filter gives the best results anyway.

DIAGNOSTICS
     Exit status is normally 0; if an error occurs, exit status is 1. If a warn-
     ing occurs, exit status is 2.

     UPX's diagnostics are intended to be self-explanatory.

BUGS
     Please report all bugs immediately to the authors.

AUTHORS
      Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer <markus@oberhumer.com>
      http://www.oberhumer.com

      Laszlo Molnar <ezerotven+github@gmail.com>

      John F. Reiser <jreiser@BitWagon.com>

COPYRIGHT
     Copyright (C) 1996-2026 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer

     Copyright (C) 1996-2026 Laszlo Molnar

     Copyright (C) 2000-2026 John F. Reiser

     UPX is distributed with full source code under the terms of the GNU General
     Public License v2+; either under the pure GPLv2+ (see the file COPYING), or
     (at your option) under the GPLv+2 with special exceptions and  restrictions
     granting the free usage for all binaries including commercial programs (see
     the file LICENSE).

     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
     ANY  WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FIT-
     NESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

     You should have received a copy of the UPX License  Agreements  along  with
     this program; see the files COPYING and LICENSE. If not, visit the UPX home
     page.

upx 5.2.0			   2026-06-08				  UPX(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=upx&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

home | help