-n flag not working in combination with tar

[tnknepp]

First, I don't know if this is a lbzip2 problem, or a problem with tar. I posted this question on stack exchange (here). Here is the short description: tar allows you to specify the compression algorithm and pass flag/options to that algorithm. So, this should tar a directory and pass that on to lbzip2 for compression using two processors in verbose mode:

tar cf dst.tar.bz2 src --use-compress-program=lbzip2 -v -n 2

The verbose flag works, but lbzip always uses the max number of processors.

RHEL 7.6
lbzip2 2.5

[cslycord]

In the command tar cf dst.tar.bz2 src --use-compress-program=lbzip2 -v -n 2
the "-v -n 2" at the end are arguments passed to tar.

The verbose flag works because tar understands verbose.

[tansy]

The verbose flag works because tar understands verbose.

It doesn't. You use it wrong way.
It should be

$ tar cf dst.tar.bz2 src --use-compress-program='lbzip2 -v -n 2'

If you want to pass arguments to the compressor you have to enclose it in quotes.
What you did was to pass 'lbzip2' as compressor, '-v -n 2' as tar arguments. And they were interpreted as options ( '-v -n' ) and '2' as file name.
I bet you got warning from tar:
tar: 2: Cannot stat: No such file or directory