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Remove static import of upx. Development environment can contain this functionality, if required. Cleanup broken script.

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Echelon9 2015-10-30 00:27:54 +11:00
parent d4ebf7a8fb
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12
build/win32/Export.bat
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cd ..\..\bin\release
..\..\import\upx\bin\upx -9 Cxbx.exe
..\..\import\upx\bin\upx -9 Cxbx.dll
copy Cxbx.exe ..\..\export\win32\bin\release\
copy Cxbx.dll ..\..\export\win32\bin\release\
cd ..\..\bin\debug
copy Cxbx.exe ..\..\export\win32\bin\debug\
copy Cxbx.pdb ..\..\export\win32\bin\debug\
copy CxbxKrnl.dll ..\..\export\win32\bin\debug\
copy CxbxKrnl.pdb ..\..\export\win32\bin\debug\
cd ..\..\build\win32

BIN
import/upx/bin/upx.exe
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Binary file not shown.

51
import/upx/doc/BUGS
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@ -1,51 +0,0 @@
ooooo ooo ooooooooo. ooooooo ooooo
`888' `8' `888 `Y88. `8888 d8'
888 8 888 .d88' Y888..8P
888 8 888ooo88P' `8888'
888 8 888 .8PY888.
`88. .8' 888 d8' `888b
`YbodP' o888o o888o o88888o
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar & John Reiser
http://upx.sourceforge.net
Limitations and other things which are not (yet) supported:
===========================================================
djgpp2/coff
-----------
* all overlays (except Allegro pakfiles) are silently stripped
dos/exe
-------
* normal dos/exes with new exe headers
* max ~24000 relocation records (...should be enough for everyone ;-)
* exe + sys combined images
watcom/le
---------
* 16-bit selector alias fixups
* 16-bit offset relocation for objects larger than 4 kB
* 16:16 fixups
If you need any of the above (they're very rare), send us an URL of a
test file.
* 16-bit objects are not loaded into DOS memory
* There is still a problem with the wdosx extender: if you compress a
watcom/le file which does NOT contain the wdosx extender, and after this
you bind the wdosx stub to the compressed file, then it will work.
Otherwise it won't.
* unpacked pmwlite compressed programs might not work when compressed
with UPX (this is a bug in pmwunlite)
win32/pe
--------
* writeable shared sections (`--force' *may* work)
* certificates in the image
* compressing files which contain a big BSS requires lots of memory
during compression

340
import/upx/doc/COPYING
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138
import/upx/doc/LICENSE
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
ooooo ooo ooooooooo. ooooooo ooooo
`888' `8' `888 `Y88. `8888 d8'
888 8 888 .d88' Y888..8P
888 8 888ooo88P' `8888'
888 8 888 .8PY888.
`88. .8' 888 d8' `888b
`YbodP' o888o o888o o88888o
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2000 Markus Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar
http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/upx.html
http://www.nexus.hu/upx
http://upx.tsx.org
PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT, ESPECIALLY IF YOU PLAN
TO MODIFY THE UPX SOURCE CODE OR USE A MODIFIED UPX VERSION.
ABSTRACT
========
UPX and UCL are copyrighted software distributed under the terms
of the GNU General Public License (hereinafter the "GPL").
The stub which is imbedded in each UPX compressed program is part
of UPX and UCL, and contains code that is under our copyright. The
terms of the GNU General Public License still apply as compressing
a program is a special form of linking with our stub.
As a special exception we grant the free usage of UPX for all
executables, including commercial programs.
See below for details and restrictions.
COPYRIGHT
=========
UPX and UCL are copyrighted software. All rights remain with the authors.
UPX is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
UPX is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Laszlo Molnar
UCL is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
==========================
UPX and the UCL library are free software; you can redistribute them
and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.
UPX and UCL are distributed in the hope that they will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; see the file COPYING.
SPECIAL EXCEPTION FOR COMPRESSED EXECUTABLES
============================================
The stub which is imbedded in each UPX compressed program is part
of UPX and UCL, and contains code that is under our copyright. The
terms of the GNU General Public License still apply as compressing
a program is a special form of linking with our stub.
Hereby Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer and Laszlo Molnar grant you special
permission to freely use and distribute all UPX compressed programs
(including commercial ones), subject to the following restrictions:
1. You must compress your program with a completely unmodified UPX
version; either with our precompiled version, or (at your option)
with a self compiled version of the unmodified UPX sources as
distributed by us.
2. This also implies that the UPX stub must be completely unmodfied, i.e.
the stub imbedded in your compressed program must be byte-identical
to the stub that is produced by the official unmodified UPX version.
3. The decompressor and any other code from the stub must exclusively get
used by the unmodified UPX stub for decompressing your program at
program startup. No portion of the stub may get read, copied,
called or otherwise get used or accessed by your program.
ANNOTATIONS
===========
- You can use a modified UPX version or modified UPX stub only for
programs that are compatible with the GNU General Public License.
- We grant you special permission to freely use and distribute all UPX
compressed programs. But any modification of the UPX stub (such as,
but not limited to, removing our copyright string or making your
program non-decompressible) will immediately revoke your right to
use and distribute a UPX compressed program.
- UPX is not a software protection tool; by requiring that you use
the unmodified UPX version for your proprietary programs we
make sure that any user can decompress your program. This protects
both you and your users as nobody can hide malicious code -
any program that cannot be decompressed is highly suspicious
by definition.
- You can integrate all or part of UPX and UCL into projects that
are compatible with the GNU GPL, but obviously you cannot grant
any special exceptions beyond the GPL for our code in your project.
- We want to actively support manufacturers of virus scanners and
similar security software. Please contact us if you would like to
incorporate parts of UPX or UCL into such a product.
Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer Laszlo Molnar
markus.oberhumer@jk.uni-linz.ac.at ml1050@cdata.tvnet.hu
Linz, Austria, 25 Feb 2000
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==================================================================
User visible changes for UPX
==================================================================
Changes in 2.01 (06 Jun 2006):
* arm/pe: better DLL support
* dos/exe: device driver support added
* linux/386: Fix --force-execve for PaX, grSecurity, and strict SELinux.
/tmp must support execve(); therefore /tmp cannot be mounted 'noexec'.
* win32/pe & arm/pe: added new option '--keep-resource=' for
excluding selected resources from compression
Changes in 2.00 (27 Apr 2006):
* linux/386: the stub now prints an error message if some strict
SELinux mode does prevent runtime decompression and execution
(for a fully SELinux-compatible but otherwise inferior compression
format you can use the '--force-execve' option)
* linux/386: worked around a problem where certain Linux kernels
clobber the %ebx register during a syscall
* win32/pe: disable filters for files with broken PE headers
Changes in 1.96 beta (13 Apr 2006):
* arm/pe: added filter support
* win32/pe: removed an unnecessary check so that Delphi 2006 and
Digital Mars C++ programs finally are supported
Changes in 1.95 beta (09 Apr 2006):
* arm/pe: added DLL support
* arm/pe: added thumb mode stub support
* arm/pe: added unpacking support
* win32/pe: really worked around R6002 runtime errors
Changes in 1.94 beta (11 Mar 2006):
* new format: added support for arm/pe (ARM executables running on WinCE)
* new format: added support for linux elf/amd64
* new format: added support for linux elf/ppc32
* new format: added support for mach/ppc32 (Apple Mac OS X)
* win32/pe: hopefully working "load config" support
* win32/pe: R6002 runtime errors worked around
* win32/pe: the stub now clears the dirty stack
Changes in 1.93 beta (07 Feb 2005):
* vmlinuz/386: fixes to support more kernels
Changes in 1.92 beta (20 Jul 2004):
* win32/pe: added option '--strip-loadconf' to strip the SEH load
config section [NOTE: this option is obsolete since UPX 1.94]
* win32/pe: try to detect .NET (win32/net) files [not yet supported by UPX]
* vmlinux/386: new format that directly supports building Linux kernels
* source code: now compiles cleanly under Win64
Changes in 1.91 beta (30 Jun 2004):
* djgpp2/coff: added support for recent binutils versions
* linux/elf386, linux/sh386: lots of improvements
* vmlinuz/386: added support for recent kernels
* watcom/le: don't crash on files without relocations
* win32/pe: stricter checks of some PE values
* option '--brute' now implies '--crp-ms=999999'.
* source code: much improved portability using ACC, the
Automatic Compiler Configuration
* source code: compile fixes for strict ISO C++ compilers
* source code: compile fixes for Win64
* re-synced with upx 1.25 branch
Changes in 1.90 beta (11 Nov 2002):
* implemented several new options for finer compression control:
'--all-methods', '--all-filters' and '--brute'
* ps1/exe: new format - UPX now supports PlayStation One programs
* linux/386: added the option '--force-execve'
* vmlinuz/386: better kernel detection and sanity checks
* re-synced with upx 1.24 branch
* documentation updates
Changes in 1.11 beta (20 Dec 2000):
* vmlinuz/386: new format - UPX now supports bootable linux kernels
* linux/elf386: added the new ELF direct-to-memory executable format - no
more temp files are needed for decompression!
* linux/sh386: added the new shell direct-to-memory executable format - no
more temp files are needed for decompression!
* reduced overall memory requirements during packing
* quite a number of internal source code rearrangements
==================================================================
Changes in 1.25 (29 Jun 2004)
* INFO: http://upx.sourceforge.net is the permanent UPX home page
* watcom/le: don't crash on files without relocations
* win32/pe: stricter checks of some PE values
* source code: much improved portability using ACC, the
Automatic Compiler Configuration
* source code: compile fixes for strict ISO C++ compilers
* source code: compile fixes for Win64
Changes in 1.24 (07 Nov 2002)
* djgpp2/coff: stricter check of the COFF header to work around a
problem with certain binutils versions
Changes in 1.23 (05 Sep 2002)
* atari/tos: fixed an unpacking problem where a buffer was too
small (introduced in 1.22)
* linux/386: don't give up too early if a single block turns out
to be incompressible
* documentation: added some quick tips how to achieve the best
compression ratio for the final release of your application
* fixed a rare situation where the exit code was not set correctly
Changes in 1.22 (27 Jun 2002)
* atari/tos: the stub now flushes the CPU cache to avoid
problems on 68030+ machines
* source code: additional compiler support for Borland C++,
Digital Mars C++ and Watcom C++
Changes in 1.21 (01 Jun 2002)
* New option '--crp-ms=' for slightly better compression at the cost
of higher memory requirements during compression.
Try 'upx --best --crp-ms=100000'. See the docs for more info.
* source code: portability fixes
* source code: compile fixes for g++ 3.0 and g++ 3.1
Changes in 1.20 (23 May 2001)
* slightly faster compression
* work around a gcc problem in the latest djgpp2 distribution
* watcom/le: fixed detection of already compressed files
* win32/pe: do not compress RT_MANIFEST resource types
* win32/pe: improved the error message for empty resource sections
* [NOTE: the jump from 1.08 to 1.20 is to avoid confusion with
our unstable development releases 1.1x and 1.9x]
Changes in 1.08 (30 Apr 2001)
* new native port to atari/tos
* win32/pe: shortened the identstring
* source code: portability fixes - UPX now builds cleanly under m68k CPUs
Changes in 1.07 (20 Feb 2001)
* win32/pe: corrected the TLS callback check
* win32/pe: really fixed that rare bug in relocation handling
* win32/pe: experimental support for SizeOfHeaders > 0x1000
* win32/pe: check for superfluous data between sections
* win32/pe: compressing screensavers (.scr) should finally work
Changes in 1.06 (27 Jan 2001)
* win32/pe: the check for TLS callbacks introduced in 1.05
was too strict - disabled for now
* dos/com: decreased the decompressor stack size a little bit
Changes in 1.05 (24 Jan 2001)
* win32/pe: refuse to compress programs with TLS callbacks
* win32/pe: stub changes to avoid slowdowns with some virus monitors
* win32/pe: reverted the relocation handling changes in 1.04
* linux/386: dont try to compress Linux kernel images (have a look
at the unstable UPX 1.1x beta versions for that)
Changes in 1.04 (19 Dec 2000)
* dos/exe: fixed an internal error when using '--no-reloc'
* win32/pe: fixed a rare bug in the relocation handling code
* some tunings for the default compression level
Changes in 1.03 (30 Nov 2000)
* linked with a new version of the NRV compression library:
- improved compression ratio a little bit
- overall significantly faster compression
- much faster when using high compression levels like '-9' or '--best'
- much faster with large files
* atari/tos: added support for FreeMiNT
* the 32-bit DOS version now uses the new CWSDSTUB extender
Changes in 1.02 (13 Sep 2000)
* watcom/le: fixed a problem with the Causeway extender
* win32/pe: don't automatically strip relocs if they seem needed
* support multiple backup generations when using '-k'
* updated the console screen driver
Changes in 1.01 (09 Apr 2000)
* win32/pe: fixed an uncompression problem in DLLs with empty
fixup sections
* win32/pe: fixed another rare uncompression problem - a field in the
PE header was set incorrectly
Changes in 1.00 (26 Mar 2000)
* documentation updates
* watcom/le: do not duplicate the non-resident name table
* win32/pe: fixed an import handling problem: sometimes too much data
could be deleted from a file -> the uncompressed file would not work
anymore
Changes in 0.99.3 (07 Mar 2000)
* win32/pe: fixed a rare problem in the stub string handling part
Changes in 0.99.2 (02 Mar 2000)
* dos/exe: fixed a typo causing an internal error (introduced in 0.99.1)
Changes in 0.99.1 (29 Feb 2000)
* win32/pe: fixed some object alignments which were causing
problems when loading compressed DLLs under Windows NT/2000
Changes in 0.99 (25 Feb 2000)
* FULL SOURCE CODE RELEASED UNDER THE TERMS OF THE GNU GPL
* win32/pe: changed default to '--strip-relocs=1'
* dos/com and dos/sys: fixed a bad decompressor problem
* linux/386: the counter for the progress indicator was off by one
Changes in 0.94 (06 Dec 1999)
* win32/pe: the stub now calls ExitProcess in case of import errors
* under DOS and Windows, the environment variable UPX now accepts
a '#' as replacement for '=' because of a COMMAND.COM limitation
Changes in 0.93 (22 Nov 1999)
* win32/pe: fixed --strip-relocs problem with uncompression
* win32/pe: fixed a bug which could produce a broken decompressor stub
* linux/386: yet another FreeBSD compatibility fix
Changes in 0.92 (14 Nov 1999)
* win32/pe: really fixed that one line (see below)
Changes in 0.91 (13 Nov 1999)
* win32/pe: an important one-line fix for the newly introduced problems
* dos/com and dos/sys: fixed an internal error
* dos/exe: correctly restore cs when uncompressing
Changes in 0.90 (10 Nov 1999)
* all formats: '--overlay=copy' now is the default overlay mode
* improved compression ratio for most files
* win32/pe: uncompression is finally supported
* win32/pe: never compress REGISTRY resources
* win32/pe: headersize was not set in PE header
* win32/pe: resource handling is rewritten
* win32/pe: the last :-) TLS problem is fixed
* win32/pe: somewhat less memory is required during compression
* linux/386: fixed compression of scripts which was broken since 0.71
* linux/386: more FreeBSD compatibility issues
* changed option: '-i' now prints some more details during compression
(not finished yet)
Changes in 0.84 (04 Oct 1999)
* dos/exe: fixed a rare problem where the decompressor could crash
* some other minor fixes
Changes in 0.83 (17 Sep 1999)
* dos/exe: fixed minimal memory requirement problem for some files
* win32/pe: fixed a bug which caused a crash in some compressed files
* linux/386: various improvements in the stub; also, for the sake
of FreeBSD users, the stub is now branded as Linux/ELF
Changes in 0.82 (16 Aug 1999)
* dos/exe: fixed a decompressor bug which could cause crash on some files
* linux/386: section headers are now stripped from the stub so that
'strip' won't ruin a compressed file any longer
* wc/le: support for stack not in the last object disabled again
* win32/pe: removed some unneeded data
Changes in 0.81 (04 Aug 1999)
* win32/pe: fixed an important bug in import handling
* dos/com: fixed an internal error that could happen with very small files
Changes in 0.80 (03 Aug 1999)
* you can set some default options in the environment var 'UPX'
* dos/com: the decompressor stub now checks for enough free memory
* dos/exe: decompressor rewritten, some bugs are fixed
* dos/exe: new option '--no-reloc': no relocation data is put into
the DOS header
* tmt/adam: added support for more stubs, detect already packed files
* tmt/adam: new option '--copy-overlay'
* wc/le: reduced memory requirement during uncompression
* wc/le: support files which do not contain their stack in the last object
* wc/le: fixed a bug which could cause a crash, improved relocation
handling
* wc/le: new option '--copy-overlay'
* win32/pe: '--compress-icons=2' is now the default
* win32/pe: even better TLS support
* win32/pe: versioninfo works on NT
* win32/pe: import by ordinal from kernel32.dll works
* win32/pe: other import improvements: importing a nonexistant DLL
results in a usual Windows message, importing a nonexistant function
results in program exit (instead of crash ;-)
* win32/pe: new option: '--compress-resources=0'
* win32/pe: reduced memory requirement during uncompression, some
files might even require LESS memory when they're compressed
* win32/pe: TYPELIBs should work now
* win32/pe: improved relocation handling, 16-bit relocations should work
* win32/pe: new option '--strip-relocs' (only if you know what you are doing)
* win32/pe: new option '--copy-overlay'
* important internal changes: now the stubs are built at runtime
Changes in 0.72 (12 May 1999)
* tmt/adam: fixed a serious problem in the decompressor stub; all
compressed tmt files should be recompressed
* win32/pe: fixed the 'shared sections not supported' warning:
read-only shared sections are fine
* win32/pe: never compress TYPELIB resources
* win32/pe: compressed files are hopefully less suspicious to heuristic
virus scanners now
* linux/386: minor decompressor stub updates, nicer progress bar
Changes in 0.71 (19 Apr 1999)
* dos/exe: added option '--no-overlay'
* linux/386: various improvements in the stub, most notably the
overhead for an extra cleanup process has been removed
* win32/pe: added support for export forwarders
* win32/pe: added support for DLLs without entry point or imports
* win32/pe: yet another .bss fix
* win32/pe: new option '--compress-icons=2': compress all icons
which are not in the first icon directory
* win32/pe: rearranged stub to avoid false alerts from some virus scanners
Changes in 0.70 (30 Mar 1999)
* added support for linux/386 executables
* improved compression ratio quite a bit
* added new compression level '--best' to squeeze out even some more bytes
* win32/pe: TLS support is much better now
* win32/pe: --compress-icons=0 should now work as well
* the usual minor fixes for win32/pe
Changes in 0.62 (16 Mar 1999)
* win32/pe: --compress-icons and --compress-exports are on now by default
* win32/pe: --compress-icons should really work now
* win32/pe: fixed a problem with embedded .bss sections
Changes in 0.61 (08 Mar 1999)
* atari/tos: fixed a problem where the bss segment could become too small
Changes in 0.60 (06 Mar 1999)
* win32/pe: fixed file corruption when the size of the export data is invalid
* win32/pe: fixed a problem with empty resource data
* win32/pe: compressed file alignment set to minimum value
* win32/pe: made all compressed sections writeable
* fixed some other win32/pe bugs
* fixed an address optimization problem for some not Watcom LE files
* fixed a bug which could make UPX hang when an exe header contained
an illegal value
* added some compression flags for the win32/pe format
* added support for Atari ST/TT executables (atari/tos)
* improved compression ratio
* improved compression speed
Changes in 0.51 (14 Jan 1999)
* fixed a small bug in the PE header that would prevent some compressed
win32/pe executables from running under Windows NT and WINE
Changes in 0.50 (03 Jan 1999)
* added support for PE format executables (win32/pe & rtm32/pe)
* added support for TMT executables (tmt/adam)
* fixed a dos/sys bug that affected OpenDOS
Changes in 0.40 (05 Oct 1998)
* improved compression ratio
* fixed a small but fatal bug in dos/sys introduced in 0.30
* fixed a rare bug in dos/exe
* worked around a bug in djgpp's strip 2.8
* djgpp/coff: Allegro packfile support should work now
* added dos/exeh compression method (works on 386+)
Changes in 0.30 (27 Jul 1998)
* fixed a serious bug in the 32-bit compressors - please don't use
djgpp/coff and watcom/le compressed files from previous versions,
some of them are possibly damaged !
* the 16-bit uncompressors are a little bit shorter & faster
* fixed progress indicator for VESA and SVGA text modes
Changes in 0.20 (05 Jul 1998)
* second public beta release
* too many changes to list here
Changes in 0.05 (26 May 1998)
* first public beta release

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888 8 888 .d88' Y888..8P
888 8 888ooo88P' `8888'
888 8 888 .8PY888.
`88. .8' 888 d8' `888b
`YbodP' o888o o888o o88888o
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar & John Reiser
http://upx.sourceforge.net
WELCOME
=======
Welcome to UPX !
Please don't forget to read the file LICENSE - UPX is distributed
under the GNU General Public License (GPL) with special exceptions
allowing the distribution of all compressed executables, including
commercial programs.
INTRODUCTION
============
UPX is an advanced executable file compressor. UPX will typically
reduce the file size of programs and DLLs by around 50%-70%, thus
reducing disk space, network load times, download times and
other distribution and storage costs.
Programs and libraries compressed by UPX are completely self-contained
and run exactly as before, with no runtime or memory penalty for most
of the supported formats.
UPX supports a number of different executable formats, including
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/CE programs and DLLs, DOS programs,
and Linux executables and kernels.
UPX is free software distributed under the term of the GNU General
Public License. Full source code is available.
UPX may be distributed and used freely, even with commercial applications.
See the UPX License Agreement for details.
UPX is rated number one in the well known Archive Comparison Test. Visit
http://compression.ca/ .
UPX aims to be Commercial Quality Freeware.
SHORT DOCUMENTATION
===================
'upx program.exe' will compress a program or DLL. For best compression
results try 'upx --brute program.exe'.
Please see the file UPX.DOC for the full documentation. The files
NEWS and BUGS also contain various tidbits of information.
DISCLAIMER
==========
UPX comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details see the file LICENSE.
Having said that, we think that UPX is quite stable now. Indeed we
have compressed lots of files without any problems. Also, the
current version has undergone several months of beta testing -
actually it's almost 8 years since our first public beta.
This is the first production quality release, and we plan that future
releases will be backward compatible with this version.
Please report all problems or suggestions to the authors. Thanks.
THE FUTURE
==========
- We'd really love to support handheld systems like the PalmPilot because
compression makes a lot of sense here. And - because of the atari/tos
format - we already have a working decompressor in 68000 assembly.
Unfortunately we know next to nothing about the operating system
architecture of such handhelds, so we need some information from
an expert. Please contact us if you think you can help.
- The Linux approach could probably get ported to a lot of other Unix
variants, at least for other i386 architectures it shouldn't be too
much work. If someone sends me a fresh hard disk and an official
FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris/BeOS... CD I might take a look at it ;-)
- We will *NOT* add any sort of protection and/or encryption.
This only gives people a false feeling of security because
by definition all protectors/compressors can be broken.
And don't trust any advertisment of authors of other executable
compressors about this topic - just do a websearch on "unpackers"...
- Fix all remaining bugs - keep your reports coming ;-)
- See the file PROJECTS in the source code distribution if you want
to contribute.
COPYRIGHT
=========
Copyright (C) 1996-2006 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
Copyright (C) 1996-2006 Laszlo Molnar
Copyright (C) 2000-2006 John F. Reiser
This program may be used freely, and you are welcome to
redistribute it under certain conditions.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
UPX License Agreement for more details.
You should have received a copy of the UPX License Agreement along
with this program; see the file LICENSE. If not, visit the UPX home page.
Share and enjoy,
Markus & Laszlo
Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer Laszlo Molnar
markus@oberhumer.com ml1050@users.sourceforge.net
[ The term UPX is a shorthand for the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
and holds no connection with potential owners of registered trademarks
or other rights. ]
[ Feel free to contact us if you have commercial compression requirements
or interesting job offers. ]

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888 8 888 .8PY888.
`88. .8' 888 d8' `888b
`YbodP' o888o o888o o88888o
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar & John Reiser
http://upx.sourceforge.net
MAJOR NEWS IN UPX 2
===================
The main news since 1.25 are:
* new format: added support for arm/pe (ARM executables running on WinCE)
* new format: added support for linux elf/amd64
* new format: added support for linux elf/ppc32
* new format: added support for mach/ppc32 (Apple Mac OS X)
* new format: added support for bootable Linux kernels ("vmlinuz/386")
* new format: added support for Playstation exes ("ps1/exe")
* slightly better compression using the new NRV2E algorithm
* new options for compression tuning (e.g. '--brute')
* improved win32/pe compatibility
* direct ELF-to-memory decompression
* various bug fixes

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888 8 888 .8PY888.
`88. .8' 888 d8' `888b
`YbodP' o888o o888o o88888o
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar & John Reiser
http://upx.sourceforge.net
.___.. .
| |_ _.._ ;_/ __
| [ )(_][ )| \_)
--------------------
UPX would not be what it is today without the invaluable help of
everybody who was kind enough to spend time testing it, using it
in applications and reporting bugs.
The following people made especially gracious contributions of their
time and energy in helping to track down bugs, add new features, and
generally assist in the UPX maintainership process:
Adam Ierymenko <api@one.net>
for severals ideas for the Linux version
Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de> and Jamie Lokier <nospam@cern.ch>
for the /proc/self/fd/X and other Linux suggestions
Andreas Muegge <andreas.muegge@gmx.de>
for the Win32 GUI
Atli Mar Gudmundsson <agudmundsson@symantec.com>
for several comments on the win32/pe stub
Charles W. Sandmann <sandmann@clio.rice.edu>
for the idea with the stubless decompressor in djgpp2/coff
Ice
for debugging the PE headersize problem down
Joergen Ibsen <jibz@hotmail.com> and d'b
for the relocation & address optimization ideas
John S. Fine <johnfine@erols.com>
for the new version of the dos/exe decompressor
Lukundoo <Lukundoo@softhome.net>
for beta testing
Michael Devore
for initial dos/exe device driver support
Oleg V. Volkov <rover@lglobus.ru>
for various FreeBSD specific informations
The Owl & G-RoM
for the --compress-icons fix
Ralph Roth <RalphRoth@gmx.net>
for reporting several bugs
Salvador Eduardo Tropea
for beta testing
The WINE project (http://www.winehq.com/)
for lots of useful information found in their PE loader sources
Natascha

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UPX TODO list. Last updated 2006-03-11.
IMPORTANT PROBLEMS THAT SHOULD BE FIXED SOON:
- [None]
OTHER:
- docs: convert docs from upx.pod to use AsciiDoc
- check all <const_cast> to make sure they are not invalid
- throwNotCompressible() is not a real error, so make the output nicer
(info: bla bla). Also ui.cpp (total_*).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPROVED COMPRESSION RATIO
==========================
- experiment with new filters
- implement filters for dos/exe
- filters: could we exploit a f->firstcall info field ?
- for small programs (e.g. < 64k), try an additional algorithm
to see if it gives better compression
ALL FORMATS
===========
- more thoroughly test the exe-header in canPack()
and throw exceptions when encountering bad values.
- implement `--cpu=486' option to use bswap on the 32-bit formats
(if cpu >= 486)
- consider removing "or ebp,-1" when not needed
FORMAT DJGPP2/COFF
==================
- handle overlays
- fix default file extension handling when the --coff option is set
FORMAT DOS/EXE
==============
- implement filters
- add a check so that we don't pack djgpp1 binaries
FORMAT LINUX/386
================
- don't mmap() the temporary output file - this seems to improve
file io speed
FORMAT TMT/ADAM
===============
- the decompressors are already aligned, no need for an
extra alignment
FORMAT WATCOM/LE
================
- handle files without relocations
- the decompressors are already aligned, no need for an
extra alignment
- fix default file extension handling when the --le option is set
- handle holes in the file
- implement compressWithFilters()
- add a call to verifyOverlappingDecompression()
FORMAT WIN16/NE
===============
- implement readFileHeader() to correctly identify a win16/ne
executable, so that the call for contribution will get thrown
FORMAT WIN32/PE
===============
- fix the section alignment with the Intel compiler
- decrease runtime memory overhead
3 - difficult) don't compress the BSS section and other holes.
4 - medium - ml) fix when objectalign < 0x1000
4 - easy - ml) put the original offset of moved resources somewhere into
the res.dir. (if it's safe to do)
4 - ??? - ml) fix FIXMEs
5 - medium - ml) try to put the preprocessed imports & relocs back to their
original section if possible. this could save some virtual memory
address space.

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NAME
upx - compress or expand executable files
SYNOPSIS
upx [ *command* ] [ *options* ] *filename*...
ABSTRACT
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar & John Reiser
http://upx.sourceforge.net
UPX is a portable, extendable, high-performance executable packer for
several different executable formats. It achieves an excellent
compression ratio 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.
While you may use UPX freely for both non-commercial and commercial
executables (for details see the file LICENSE), we would highly
appreciate if you credit UPX and ourselves in the documentation,
possibly including a reference to the UPX home page. Thanks.
[ Using UPX in non-OpenSource applications without proper credits is
considered not politically correct ;-) ]
DISCLAIMER
UPX comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details see the file LICENSE.
This is the first production quality release, and we plan that future
1.xx releases will be backward compatible with this version.
Please report all problems or suggestions to the authors. Thanks.
DESCRIPTION
UPX is a versatile executable packer with the following features:
- excellent compression ratio: compresses better than zip/gzip,
use UPX to decrease the size of your distribution !
- very fast decompression: about 10 MB/sec on an ancient Pentium 133,
about 200 MB/sec on an Athlon XP 2000+.
- no memory overhead for your compressed executables for most of the
supported formats
- 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:
* atari/tos
* bvmlinuz/386 [bootable Linux kernel]
* djgpp2/coff
* dos/com
* dos/exe
* dos/sys
* linux/386
* linux/elf386
* linux/sh386
* ps1/exe
* rtm32/pe
* tmt/adam
* vmlinuz/386 [bootable Linux kernel]
* vmlinux/386
* watcom/le (supporting DOS4G, PMODE/W, DOS32a and CauseWay)
* win32/pe (exe and dll)
* arm/pe (exe and dll)
* linux/elfamd64
* linux/elfppc32
* mach/elfppc32
- 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 can be distributed and used freely. And from version 0.99
the full source code of UPX is released under the GNU General Public
License (GPL) !
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
specified 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
[ ...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 kB, and
-7 otherwise.
* 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 start for achieving the best compression ratio:
Try upx --brute myfile.exe.
Details for achieving the best compression ratio:
* Use the compression level --best.
* Try one or both of the options --all-methods and --all-filters.
* Try the option --crp-ms=NUMBER. This uses more memory during
compression to achieve a (slightly) better compression ratio.
NUMBER must be a decimal value from 10000 to 999999, inclusive. The
default value is 10000 (ten thousand).
* Info: the option --brute is an abbrevation for the options --best
--all-methods --all-filters --crp-ms=999999.
* Try if --overlay=strip works.
* For win32/pe programs there's --strip-relocs=0. See notes below.
OVERLAY HANDLING OPTIONS
Info: An "overlay" means auxillary data atached 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 accesses this overlayed 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
The environment variable UPX can hold a set of default options for UPX.
These options are interpreted first and can be overwritten by explicit
command 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
environment 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
variable.
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 http://www.freemint.de 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
themselves (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
themselves (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 KByte aligment of the stub.
UPX includes the full functionality of stubify. This means it will
automatically stubify your COFF files. Use the option --coff to disable
this functionality (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 excutables ("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 filesystem storage, then
invoking and running a compressed executable can be faster than
directly running the corresponding uncompressed program.
The operating system might perfrom 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 filesystem.
``Medium-sized'' programs which access about 1/3 to 1/2 of their
stored program bytes can do particulary 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 filesystem 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 exectuables.
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
filesystem 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 filesystem. Interestingly -
because of the good memory management of the Linux kernel - this
often does not introduce a noticable 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 filesystem 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 filesystem 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 noticable delay when starting programs like my ~3 MB emacs (which
is less than 1 MB 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 feelings of one of the authors.
Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after
uncompression, until further notice.
Maximum uncompressed size: ~1998848 bytes.
Notes:
- UPX creates as default a 'CD-Rom only' PS1/PS2 compatible executable.
For transfer between client/target use options below.
- 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 set a few 'bytes higher' loading
offset for the packed file, but this isn't a real problem if it is a
single or boot-only 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.
--boot-only The format will only run from a CD and may slightly
improves the compression ratio. The decompression
routines are faster than default ones.
But it cannot be used for host/client 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 client/target 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
bootdisks.
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 incompabilities 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 program is loaded into memory at startup. If you start several
instances of huge compressed programs you're wasting memory because the
common segements 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 application 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 has some minor memory overhead (usually in the
10 - 30 kbytes 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-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
warning 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 <ml1050@users.sourceforge.net>
John F. Reiser <jreiser@BitWagon.com>
Jens Medoch <jssg@users.sourceforge.net>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1996-2006 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer
Copyright (C) 1996-2006 Laszlo Molnar
Copyright (C) 2000-2006 John F. Reiser
Copyright (C) 2002-2006 Jens Medoch
This program may be used freely, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the UPX License
Agreement for more details.
You should have received a copy of the UPX License Agreement along with
this program; see the file LICENSE. If not, visit the UPX home page.

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<head>
<title>upx - compress or expand executable files</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
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<p><a name="__index__"></a></p>
<!-- INDEX BEGIN -->
<!--
<ul>
<li><a href="#name">NAME</a></li>
<li><a href="#synopsis">SYNOPSIS</a></li>
<li><a href="#abstract">ABSTRACT</a></li>
<li><a href="#disclaimer">DISCLAIMER</a></li>
<li><a href="#description">DESCRIPTION</a></li>
<li><a href="#commands">COMMANDS</a></li>
<ul>
<li><a href="#compress">Compress</a></li>
<li><a href="#decompress">Decompress</a></li>
<li><a href="#test">Test</a></li>
<li><a href="#list">List</a></li>
</ul>
<li><a href="#options">OPTIONS</a></li>
<li><a href="#compression_levels___tuning">COMPRESSION LEVELS &amp; TUNING</a></li>
<li><a href="#overlay_handling_options">OVERLAY HANDLING OPTIONS</a></li>
<li><a href="#environment">ENVIRONMENT</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_the_supported_executable_formats">NOTES FOR THE SUPPORTED EXECUTABLE FORMATS</a></li>
<ul>
<li><a href="#notes_for_atari_tos">NOTES FOR ATARI/TOS</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_bvmlinuz_i386">NOTES FOR BVMLINUZ/I386</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_dos_com">NOTES FOR DOS/COM</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_dos_exe">NOTES FOR DOS/EXE</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_dos_sys">NOTES FOR DOS/SYS</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_djgpp2_coff">NOTES FOR DJGPP2/COFF</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_linux__general_">NOTES FOR LINUX [general]</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_linux_elf386">NOTES FOR LINUX/ELF386</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_linux_sh386">NOTES FOR LINUX/SH386</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_linux_386">NOTES FOR LINUX/386</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_ps1_exe">NOTES FOR PS1/EXE</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_rtm32_pe_and_arm_pe">NOTES FOR RTM32/PE and ARM/PE</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_tmt_adam">NOTES FOR TMT/ADAM</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_vmlinuz_386">NOTES FOR VMLINUZ/386</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_watcom_le">NOTES FOR WATCOM/LE</a></li>
<li><a href="#notes_for_win32_pe">NOTES FOR WIN32/PE</a></li>
</ul>
<li><a href="#diagnostics">DIAGNOSTICS</a></li>
<li><a href="#bugs">BUGS</a></li>
<li><a href="#authors">AUTHORS</a></li>
<li><a href="#copyright">COPYRIGHT</a></li>
</ul>
-->
<!-- INDEX END -->
<p>
</p>
<h1><a name="name">NAME</a></h1>
<p>upx - compress or expand executable files</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="synopsis">SYNOPSIS</a></h1>
<p><strong>upx</strong> [&nbsp;<em>command</em>&nbsp;] [&nbsp;<em>options</em>&nbsp;] <em>filename</em>...</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="abstract">ABSTRACT</a></h1>
<pre>
The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Markus Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar &amp; John Reiser
<a href="http://upx.sourceforge.net">http://upx.sourceforge.net</a></pre>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> is a portable, extendable, high-performance executable packer for
several different executable formats. It achieves an excellent compression
ratio and offers <em>*very*</em> fast decompression. Your executables suffer
no memory overhead or other drawbacks for most of the formats supported,
because of in-place decompression.</p>
<p>While you may use <strong>UPX</strong> freely for both non-commercial and commercial
executables (for details see the file LICENSE), we would highly
appreciate if you credit <strong>UPX</strong> and ourselves in the documentation,
possibly including a reference to the <strong>UPX</strong> home page. Thanks.</p>
<p>[ Using <strong>UPX</strong> in non-OpenSource applications without proper credits
is considered not politically correct ;-) ]</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="disclaimer">DISCLAIMER</a></h1>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details see the file LICENSE.</p>
<p>This is the first production quality release, and we plan that future 1.xx
releases will be backward compatible with this version.</p>
<p>Please report all problems or suggestions to the authors. Thanks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="description">DESCRIPTION</a></h1>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> is a versatile executable packer with the following features:</p>
<pre>
- excellent compression ratio: compresses better than zip/gzip,
use UPX to decrease the size of your distribution !</pre>
<pre>
- very fast decompression: about 10 MB/sec on an ancient Pentium 133,
about 200 MB/sec on an Athlon XP 2000+.</pre>
<pre>
- no memory overhead for your compressed executables for most of the
supported formats</pre>
<pre>
- safe: you can list, test and unpack your executables
Also, a checksum of both the compressed and uncompressed file is
maintained internally.</pre>
<pre>
- universal: UPX can pack a number of executable formats:
* atari/tos
* bvmlinuz/386 [bootable Linux kernel]
* djgpp2/coff
* dos/com
* dos/exe
* dos/sys
* linux/386
* linux/elf386
* linux/sh386
* ps1/exe
* rtm32/pe
* tmt/adam
* vmlinuz/386 [bootable Linux kernel]
* vmlinux/386
* watcom/le (supporting DOS4G, PMODE/W, DOS32a and CauseWay)
* win32/pe (exe and dll)
* arm/pe (exe and dll)
* linux/elfamd64
* linux/elfppc32
* mach/elfppc32</pre>
<pre>
- portable: UPX is written in portable endian-neutral C++</pre>
<pre>
- extendable: because of the class layout it's very easy to support
new executable formats or add new compression algorithms</pre>
<pre>
- free: UPX can be distributed and used freely. And from version 0.99
the full source code of UPX is released under the GNU General Public
License (GPL) !</pre>
<p>You probably understand now why we call <strong>UPX</strong> the ``<em>ultimate</em>''
executable packer.</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="commands">COMMANDS</a></h1>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="compress">Compress</a></h2>
<p>This is the default operation, eg. <strong>upx yourfile.exe</strong> will compress the file
specified on the command line.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="decompress">Decompress</a></h2>
<p>All <strong>UPX</strong> supported file formats can be unpacked using the <strong>-d</strong> switch, eg.
<strong>upx -d yourfile.exe</strong> will uncompress the file you've just compressed.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="test">Test</a></h2>
<p>The <strong>-t</strong> command tests the integrity of the compressed and uncompressed
data, eg. <strong>upx -t yourfile.exe</strong> 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.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="list">List</a></h2>
<p>The <strong>-l</strong> command prints out some information about the compressed files
specified on the command line as parameters, eg <strong>upx -l yourfile.exe</strong>
shows the compressed / uncompressed size and the compression ratio of
<em>yourfile.exe</em>.</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="options">OPTIONS</a></h1>
<p><strong>-q</strong>: be quiet, suppress warnings</p>
<p><strong>-q -q</strong> (or <strong>-qq</strong>): be very quiet, suppress errors</p>
<p><strong>-q -q -q</strong> (or <strong>-qqq</strong>): produce no output at all</p>
<p><strong>--help</strong>: prints the help</p>
<p><strong>--version</strong>: print the version of <strong>UPX</strong></p>
<p>[ ...to be written... - type `<strong>upx --help</strong>' for now ]</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="compression_levels___tuning">COMPRESSION LEVELS &amp; TUNING</a></h1>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> offers ten different compression levels from <strong>-1</strong> to <strong>-9</strong>,
and <strong>--best</strong>. The default compression level is <strong>-8</strong> for files
smaller than 512 kB, and <strong>-7</strong> otherwise.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Compression levels 1, 2 and 3 are pretty fast.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Compression levels 4, 5 and 6 achieve a good time/ratio performance.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Compression levels 7, 8 and 9 favor compression ratio over speed.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Compression level <strong>--best</strong> may take a long time.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Note that compression level <strong>--best</strong> can be somewhat slow for large
files, but you definitely should use it when releasing a final version
of your program.</p>
<p>Quick start for achieving the best compression ratio:</p>
<p>Try <strong>upx --brute myfile.exe</strong>.</p>
<p>Details for achieving the best compression ratio:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Use the compression level <strong>--best</strong>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Try one or both of the options <strong>--all-methods</strong> and <strong>--all-filters</strong>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Try the option <strong>--crp-ms=NUMBER</strong>. This uses more memory during compression
to achieve a (slightly) better compression ratio.</p>
<p>NUMBER must be a decimal value from 10000 to 999999, inclusive.
The default value is 10000 (ten thousand).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Info: the option <strong>--brute</strong> is an abbrevation for the options
<strong>--best --all-methods --all-filters --crp-ms=999999</strong>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Try if <strong>--overlay=strip</strong> works.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>For win32/pe programs there's <strong>--strip-relocs=0</strong>. See notes below.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="overlay_handling_options">OVERLAY HANDLING OPTIONS</a></h1>
<p>Info: An ``overlay'' means auxillary data atached 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).</p>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> 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 accesses this overlayed data.</p>
<pre>
--overlay=copy Copy any extra data attached to the file. [DEFAULT]</pre>
<pre>
--overlay=strip Strip any overlay from the program instead of
copying it. Be warned, this may make the compressed
program crash or otherwise unusable.</pre>
<pre>
--overlay=skip Refuse to compress any program which has an overlay.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="environment">ENVIRONMENT</a></h1>
<p>The environment variable <strong>UPX</strong> can hold a set of default
options for <strong>UPX</strong>. These options are interpreted first and
can be overwritten by explicit command line parameters.
For example:</p>
<pre>
for DOS/Windows: set UPX=-9 --compress-icons#0
for sh/ksh/zsh: UPX=&quot;-9 --compress-icons=0&quot;; export UPX
for csh/tcsh: setenv UPX &quot;-9 --compress-icons=0&quot;</pre>
<p>Under DOS/Windows you must use '#' instead of '=' when setting the
environment variable because of a COMMAND.COM limitation.</p>
<p>Not all of the options are valid in the environment variable -
<strong>UPX</strong> will tell you.</p>
<p>You can explicitly use the <strong>--no-env</strong> option to ignore the
environment variable.</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="notes_for_the_supported_executable_formats">NOTES FOR THE SUPPORTED EXECUTABLE FORMATS</a></h1>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_atari_tos">NOTES FOR ATARI/TOS</a></h2>
<p>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 <a href="http://www.freemint.de">http://www.freemint.de</a> for more info.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.
All debug information will be stripped, though.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_bvmlinuz_i386">NOTES FOR BVMLINUZ/I386</a></h2>
<p>Same as vmlinuz/i386.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_dos_com">NOTES FOR DOS/COM</a></h2>
<p>Obviously <strong>UPX</strong> won't work with executables that want to read data from
themselves (like some commandline utilities that ship with Win95/98/ME).</p>
<p>Compressed programs only work on a 286+.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.</p>
<p>Maximum uncompressed size: ~65100 bytes.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--8086 Create an executable that works on any 8086 CPU.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_dos_exe">NOTES FOR DOS/EXE</a></h2>
<p>dos/exe stands for all ``normal'' 16-bit DOS executables.</p>
<p>Obviously <strong>UPX</strong> won't work with executables that want to read data from
themselves (like some command line utilities that ship with Win95/98/ME).</p>
<p>Compressed programs only work on a 286+.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--8086 Create an executable that works on any 8086 CPU.</pre>
<pre>
--no-reloc Use no relocation records in the exe header.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_dos_sys">NOTES FOR DOS/SYS</a></h2>
<p>Compressed programs only work on a 286+.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.</p>
<p>Maximum uncompressed size: ~65350 bytes.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--8086 Create an executable that works on any 8086 CPU.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_djgpp2_coff">NOTES FOR DJGPP2/COFF</a></h2>
<p>First of all, it is recommended to use <strong>UPX</strong> *instead* of <strong>strip</strong>. strip has
the very bad habit of replacing your stub with its own (outdated) version.
Additionally <strong>UPX</strong> corrects a bug/feature in strip v2.8.x: it
will fix the 4 KByte aligment of the stub.</p>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> includes the full functionality of stubify. This means it will
automatically stubify your COFF files. Use the option <strong>--coff</strong> to
disable this functionality (see below).</p>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> automatically handles Allegro packfiles.</p>
<p>The DLM format (a rather exotic shared library extension) is not supported.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.
All debug information and trailing garbage will be stripped, though.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--coff Produce COFF output instead of EXE. By default
UPX keeps your current stub.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_linux__general_">NOTES FOR LINUX [general]</a></h2>
<p>Introduction</p>
<pre>
Linux/386 support in UPX consists of 3 different executable formats,
one optimized for ELF excutables (&quot;linux/elf386&quot;), one optimized
for shell scripts (&quot;linux/sh386&quot;), and one generic format
(&quot;linux/386&quot;).</pre>
<pre>
We will start with a general discussion first, but please
also read the relevant docs for each of the individual formats.</pre>
<pre>
Also, there is special support for bootable kernels - see the
description of the vmlinuz/386 format.</pre>
<p>General user's overview</p>
<pre>
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.</pre>
<pre>
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.</pre>
<pre>
Depending on the statistics of usage and access, and the relative
speeds of CPU, RAM, swap space, /tmp, and filesystem storage, then
invoking and running a compressed executable can be faster than
directly running the corresponding uncompressed program.
The operating system might perfrom 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 filesystem.
``Medium-sized'' programs which access about 1/3 to 1/2 of their
stored program bytes can do particulary 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.</pre>
<pre>
Currently, executables compressed by UPX do not share RAM at runtime
in the way that executables mapped from a filesystem 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.</pre>
<pre>
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''.</pre>
<p>General benefits:</p>
<pre>
- 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.</pre>
<pre>
- Compressed programs are completely self-contained. No need for
any external program.</pre>
<pre>
- 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. ]</pre>
<pre>
- As the stub only uses syscalls and isn't linked against libc it
should run under any Linux configuration that can run ELF
binaries.</pre>
<pre>
- For the same reason compressed executables should run under
FreeBSD and other systems which can run Linux binaries.
[ Please send feedback on this topic ]</pre>
<p>General drawbacks:</p>
<pre>
- 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.</pre>
<pre>
- `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.</pre>
<p>General notes:</p>
<pre>
- As UPX leaves your original program untouched it is advantageous
to strip it before compression.</pre>
<pre>
- If you compress a script you will lose platform independence -
this could be a problem if you are using NFS mounted disks.</pre>
<pre>
- Compression of suid, guid and sticky-bit programs is rejected
because of possible security implications.</pre>
<pre>
- For the same reason there is no sense in making any compressed
program suid.</pre>
<pre>
- 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.</pre>
<pre>
- 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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_linux_elf386">NOTES FOR LINUX/ELF386</a></h2>
<p>Please read the general Linux description first.</p>
<p>The linux/elf386 format decompresses directly into RAM,
uses only one exec, does not use space in /tmp,
and does not use /proc.</p>
<p>Linux/elf386 is automatically selected for Linux ELF exectuables.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.</p>
<p>How it works:</p>
<pre>
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.</pre>
<pre>
The UPX stub is about 1700 bytes long, partly written in assembler
and only uses kernel syscalls. It is not linked against any libc.</pre>
<p>Specific drawbacks:</p>
<pre>
- 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 &quot;out of memory&quot;
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.</pre>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
(none)</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_linux_sh386">NOTES FOR LINUX/SH386</a></h2>
<p>Please read the general Linux description first.</p>
<p>Shell scripts where the underling shell accepts a ``-c'' argument
can use the Linux/sh386 format. <strong>UPX</strong> 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.</p>
<p>Linux/sh386 is automatically selected for shell scripts that
use a known shell.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.</p>
<p>How it works:</p>
<pre>
For shell script executables (files beginning with &quot;#!/&quot; or &quot;#! /&quot;)
where the shell is known to accept &quot;-c &lt;command&gt;&quot;, 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 &quot;-c&quot;. 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: &quot;#! /bin/sh option3\n&quot;.)</pre>
<pre>
The UPX stub is about 1700 bytes long, partly written in assembler
and only uses kernel syscalls. It is not linked against any libc.</pre>
<p>Specific drawbacks:</p>
<pre>
- 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 &quot;out of memory&quot;
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.</pre>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
(none)</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_linux_386">NOTES FOR LINUX/386</a></h2>
<p>Please read the general Linux description first.</p>
<p>The generic linux/386 format decompresses to /tmp and needs
/proc filesystem support. It starts the decompressed program
via the <code>execve()</code> syscall.</p>
<p>Linux/386 is only selected if the specialized linux/elf386
and linux/sh386 won't recognize a file.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression.</p>
<p>How it works:</p>
<pre>
For files which are not ELF and not a script for a known &quot;-c&quot; shell,
UPX uses kernel execve(), which first requires decompressing to a
temporary file in the filesystem. Interestingly -
because of the good memory management of the Linux kernel - this
often does not introduce a noticable 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 filesystem buffers.</pre>
<pre>
A compressed executable consists of the UPX stub and an overlay
which contains the original program in a compressed form.</pre>
<pre>
The UPX stub is a statically linked ELF executable and does
the following at program startup:</pre>
<pre>
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/&lt;pid&gt;/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</pre>
<pre>
The UPX stub is about 1700 bytes long, partly written in assembler
and only uses kernel syscalls. It is not linked against any libc.</pre>
<p>Specific drawbacks:</p>
<pre>
- 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.</pre>
<pre>
- You must have /proc filesystem support as the stub wants to open
/proc/&lt;pid&gt;/exe and needs /proc/&lt;pid&gt;/fd/X. This also means that you
cannot compress programs that are used during the boot sequence
before /proc is mounted.</pre>
<pre>
- 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/&lt;pid&gt;/fd/3).</pre>
<pre>
- Because of temporary decompression to disk the decompression speed
is not as fast as with the other executable formats. Still, I can see
no noticable delay when starting programs like my ~3 MB emacs (which
is less than 1 MB when compressed :-).</pre>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--force-execve Force the use of the generic linux/386 &quot;execve&quot;
format, i.e. do not try the linux/elf386 and
linux/sh386 formats.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_ps1_exe">NOTES FOR PS1/EXE</a></h2>
<p>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 feelings of one of the authors.</p>
<p>Packed programs will be byte-identical to the original after uncompression,
until further notice.</p>
<p>Maximum uncompressed size: ~1998848 bytes.</p>
<p>Notes:</p>
<pre>
- UPX creates as default a 'CD-Rom only' PS1/PS2 compatible executable.
For transfer between client/target use options below.</pre>
<pre>
- 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 &quot;--force&quot; option UPX will set a few 'bytes higher' loading
offset for the packed file, but this isn't a real problem if it is a
single or boot-only executable.</pre>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--boot-only The format will only run from a CD and may slightly
improves the compression ratio. The decompression
routines are faster than default ones.
But it cannot be used for host/client transfer !</pre>
<pre>
--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 client/target transfer only !</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_rtm32_pe_and_arm_pe">NOTES FOR RTM32/PE and ARM/PE</a></h2>
<p>Same as win32/pe.</p>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_tmt_adam">NOTES FOR TMT/ADAM</a></h2>
<p>This format is used by the TMT Pascal compiler - see <a href="http://www.tmt.com/">http://www.tmt.com/</a> .</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_vmlinuz_386">NOTES FOR VMLINUZ/386</a></h2>
<p>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 <strong>UPX</strong> compression method.</p>
<p>vmlinuz/386 is completely unrelated to the other Linux executable
formats, and it does not share any of their drawbacks.</p>
<p>Notes:</p>
<pre>
- Be sure that &quot;vmlinuz/386&quot; or &quot;bvmlinuz/386&quot; is displayed
during compression - otherwise a wrong executable format
may have been used, and the kernel won't boot.</pre>
<p>Benefits:</p>
<pre>
- 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
bootdisks.</pre>
<pre>
For example, this is what I get for my 2.2.16 kernel:
1589708 vmlinux
641073 bzImage [original]
560755 bzImage.upx [compressed by &quot;upx -9&quot;]</pre>
<pre>
- Much faster decompression at kernel boot time (but kernel
decompression speed is not really an issue these days).</pre>
<p>Drawbacks:</p>
<pre>
(none)</pre>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_watcom_le">NOTES FOR WATCOM/LE</a></h2>
<p><strong>UPX</strong> 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).</p>
<p>DLLs and the LX format are not supported.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--le Produce an unbound LE output instead of
keeping the current stub.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<h2><a name="notes_for_win32_pe">NOTES FOR WIN32/PE</a></h2>
<p>The PE support in <strong>UPX</strong> is quite stable now, but probably there are
still some incompabilities with some files.</p>
<p>Because of the way <strong>UPX</strong> (and other packers for this format) works, you
can see increased memory usage of your compressed files because the whole
program is loaded into memory at startup.
If you start several instances of huge compressed programs you're
wasting memory because the common segements 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.</p>
<p>If you're running executables from network, then compressed programs
will load faster, and require less bandwidth during execution.</p>
<p>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
application may be a better idea.</p>
<p>Screensavers are supported, with the restriction that the filename
must end with ``.scr'' (as screensavers are handled slightly different
than normal exe files).</p>
<p>UPX compressed PE files has some minor memory overhead (usually in the
10 - 30 kbytes range) which can be seen by specifying the ``-i'' command
line switch during compression.</p>
<p>Extra options available for this executable format:</p>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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]</pre>
<pre>
--compress-resources=0 Don't compress any resources at all.</pre>
<pre>
--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&lt;type[/name]&gt;.
I&lt;Type&gt; 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&lt;Name&gt; is the
identifier of the resource. It can be a decimal number
or a string. For example:</pre>
<pre>
--keep-resource=2/MYBITMAP,5,6/12345</pre>
<pre>
UPX won't compress the named bitmap resource &quot;MYBITMAP&quot;,
it leaves every dialog (5) resource uncompressed, and
it won't touch the string table resource with identifier
12345.</pre>
<pre>
--force Force compression even when there is an
unexpected value in a header field.
Use with care.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<pre>
--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.</pre>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="diagnostics">DIAGNOSTICS</a></h1>
<p>Exit status is normally 0; if an error occurs, exit status
is 1. If a warning occurs, exit status is 2.</p>
<p><strong>UPX</strong>'s diagnostics are intended to be self-explanatory.</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="bugs">BUGS</a></h1>
<p>Please report all bugs immediately to the authors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="authors">AUTHORS</a></h1>
<pre>
Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer &lt;markus@oberhumer.com&gt;
<a href="http://www.oberhumer.com">http://www.oberhumer.com</a></pre>
<pre>
Laszlo Molnar &lt;ml1050@users.sourceforge.net&gt;</pre>
<pre>
John F. Reiser &lt;jreiser@BitWagon.com&gt;</pre>
<pre>
Jens Medoch &lt;jssg@users.sourceforge.net&gt;</pre>
<p>
</p>
<hr />
<h1><a name="copyright">COPYRIGHT</a></h1>
<p>Copyright (C) 1996-2006 Markus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumer</p>
<p>Copyright (C) 1996-2006 Laszlo Molnar</p>
<p>Copyright (C) 2000-2006 John F. Reiser</p>
<p>Copyright (C) 2002-2006 Jens Medoch</p>
<p>This program may be used freely, and you are welcome to
redistribute it under certain conditions.</p>
<p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
<strong>UPX License Agreement</strong> for more details.</p>
<p>You should have received a copy of the UPX License Agreement along
with this program; see the file LICENSE. If not, visit the UPX home page.</p>
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