Michal Jaegermann wrote: > That a file is sparse. [...] > > This also means that if you will try 'cat /var/log/lastlog > copy' > this will take a long while and will indeed eat a disk space. > GNU 'cp' uses some heuristic, and options, to handle sparse files > but in general copying such things requires some care. Indeed: tar cf /tmp/unbelievably-huge-file /var/log/lastlog I killed it after 10 seconds and a few hundred MB. What if someone tries to backup their logs? Surely there must be a saner way to store this data than a 1.2TB sparse file... This is a sysadmin disaster waiting to happen. Andy