RPM to XZ Converter
FileFlip converts RPM to XZ entirely inside your browser, using libarchive compiled to WebAssembly. The file is never uploaded to a server: it is read off your disk, converted on your own machine, and saved back by the browser. That means no file-size limit, no queue and no account.
How do I convert an RPM file to XZ?#
- Drop your RPM file onto the converter at the top of this page, or click it to pick one from your computer. You can add as many as you like.
- Leave the target set to XZ and the conversion starts on its own. FileFlip downloads 1.0 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, then runs libarchive on your own machine.
- Save the XZ file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting RPM to XZ lose quality?#
No. Converting RPM to XZ does not touch the files inside the archive. Each member is read out and written back byte for byte, so only the wrapper around them changes and nothing is recompressed.
Is it safe to convert RPM files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts RPM files inside the browser tab you already have open, using WebAssembly builds of the same engines a desktop converter would install. Your file is read from your own disk into the page's memory, and no request carrying it is ever made.
You do not have to take that on trust. Open your browser's network panel, run a conversion, and you will see the engine come down and your file go nowhere. There is no upload, no server-side copy, no retention window, and no account tied to what you converted.
How FileFlip works lists every engine, its version and its download size, and shows how to check for yourself that nothing leaves your machine.
What RPM to XZ actually does to the file#
Converting RPM to XZ runs on libarchive, downloads 1.0 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, copies the archived files through unchanged, keeps file contents.
| Engine | libarchive |
|---|---|
| Conversion path | 2 steps: RPM → the unpacked files → XZ |
| Downloaded to your browser | 1.0 MB, once, then cached by your browser |
| Quality | Lossless, contents copied unchanged |
| You get back | One file |
| Where it runs | In a background worker, so the page stays responsive |
What survives the conversion
| What is in the file | This conversion | Why |
|---|---|---|
| File contents | Kept | Carried through into the converted file. |
| File timestamps | Sometimes | Survives for some files and not others. |
| File permissions | Sometimes | Survives for some files and not others. |
Worth knowing before you start:
- the output is a PAX tar archive inside the compressor, not a single compressed stream
- every entry is extracted into memory before anything is written, so a very large archive can exhaust it
What is an RPM file?#
An RPM file is an RPM Package Manager package: a lead and signature block, a header of package metadata, and a compressed cpio archive holding the files to install.
An RPM is the format to build or inspect when packaging software for Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE or another RPM-based distribution.
Convert or extract an RPM's payload when only the files inside are needed, or when the target system uses a Debian-family distribution instead.
What is an XZ file?#
An XZ file is a single stream compressed with LZMA2 inside a container that adds framing, size fields and a CRC or SHA-256 integrity check, specified by the Tukaani project's xz format starting in 2009.
Use XZ when the smallest practical archive size matters more than how long compression takes, which is why Linux distributions compress their packages and kernel source with it.
Convert XZ to GZ when the archive needs to decompress on something old or constrained enough that gzip's lighter decoder matters.
RPM to XZ questions people ask#
How do I open an RPM file without installing it?
Piping rpm2cpio package.rpm into cpio -idmv extracts an RPM's files to the current directory without installing anything or touching the RPM database. 7-Zip does the same thing through its GUI on Windows.
What's inside an RPM file?
An RPM file has four parts: a lead identifying it as an RPM, a signature block for verifying authenticity, a header of metadata like the package name, version and full file list, and a payload that is a compressed cpio archive of the actual files.
How do I install an RPM file?
sudo rpm -i package.rpm installs it directly but will not fetch missing dependencies, so sudo dnf install package.rpm (or zypper or yum, depending on the distribution) is the safer route since it resolves dependencies from the configured repositories first.
Can I open an RPM file on Windows or macOS?
7-Zip on Windows extracts an RPM's cpio payload directly, and p7zip provides the same support on macOS and Linux. Neither actually installs the package, since installation depends on the RPM database that only exists on an RPM-based Linux system.