[OSM-talk] Why bz2?

[Daniel van Gerpen]

On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:59:54 +0100
Fabio Alessandro Locati <fabiolocati at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
> wrote:
> > We have introduced a new binary format that compresses far better
> > than even xz, so if you're willing to install extra software for
> > uncompressing data, go with the new pbf format. Extracts on the
> > download.geofabrik.de site are already available in .osm.pbf, and
> > sonner or later the full planet file will be, too.
> Awesome, but I haven't found a way to uncompress it.
> 
> PS: My question raised because my 4 cores PhenomII computer has
> downloaded for more than 11 hours and is uncompressing since 4 hours
> ago the planet with full history and haven't finished yet ;)

If you have multiple cores, pbzip2 might be of interest:

  http://compression.ca/pbzip2/

Daniel