TAR.XZ (TXZ) to CPIO Converter
Convert your tar.xz files to cpio online & free
tar.xz
cpio
How to convert TAR.XZ to CPIO
Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.
Choose cpio or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)
Let the file convert and you can download your cpio file right afterwards
About formats
TAR.XZ is a compound archive format combining TAR) archiving with XZ compression, developed by the Tukaani Project and led by Lasse Collin since 2009. The TAR layer bundles files preserving Unix metadata, and XZ applies LZMA2 compression within a robust container featuring CRC-32 and CRC-64 integrity checks, padding support for media storage, and a stream/block structure enabling parallel decompression. LZMA2 improves on LZMA with better handling of incompressible data and multi-threaded compression support. TAR.XZ has become the preferred distribution format for many open-source projects — the Linux kernel, GNU core utilities, and numerous other packages ship their source tarballs as .tar.xz files. One advantage is the best compression-to-decompression-speed ratio among widely supported formats — XZ achieves compression ratios comparable to 7Z while decompressing faster than bzip2, an ideal combination for software distribution. The built-in integrity verification is another strength: unlike raw LZMA streams, the XZ container includes checksums that detect corruption before data reaches the application layer. GNU tar supports TAR.XZ natively via the -J flag, and xz-utils are packaged in every major Linux distribution. The format has effectively replaced TAR.GZ and TAR.BZ2 as the default for source code distribution in the open-source ecosystem.
CPIO (Copy In, Copy Out) is a Unix archive format dating to the PWB/UNIX system at AT&T Bell Labs in 1977, predating even the tar format. The name describes the tool's original operation: copying files in to an archive and out from an archive. CPIO stores files sequentially with per-file headers containing the filename, inode information, permissions, ownership, timestamps, and file size, followed by the file data itself. The format exists in several variants: the original binary format, the POSIX.1-defined octet-oriented (ODC) format, the SVR4 newc format with expanded device and inode fields, and the CRC variant that adds checksum verification. Unlike tar, CPIO reads the list of files to archive from standard input, making it naturally composable with find and other Unix utilities through pipes. One advantage is faithful Unix metadata preservation — CPIO records device numbers, inode information, and hard link relationships with higher fidelity than early tar implementations, making it suitable for system-level backups and device file archiving. The format's central role in Linux package management is another practical significance: the RPM package format uses CPIO as its internal payload container, meaning every RPM-based Linux installation relies on CPIO extraction. While tar has become more common for general archiving, CPIO persists in system administration, initramfs images, and package management infrastructure.