Jesse Keating wrote:
On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 16:37 -0400, Michael Wiktowy wrote:
In your experience, is there a reason not to use --sparse in most occasions?
And then we have an even longer thread about tar changing it's default
behavior and pissing off even MORE admins who have been using tar for
decades on not just Linux. That is a VERY silly suggestion.
Well ... long threads are fine if they stay constructive and informative.
I'll ask again because I honestly don't know the answer:
Is there a reason not to use --sparse in most occasions?
Call me an ignorant newb if it makes you feel better, but I would like
an answer from someone knowledgable since all my Googling indicates:
- there is just a slight slowdown since it has to read the file twice
(Andy Ross' test only covered one condition ... I would imagine tarring
a 1.4TB file takes a long time *any* way you do it.)
- there is a large slowdown on compressing a sparse file
- there is some indication that sparse file handling should be automatic
and the --sparse option removed completely
Ref:
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_mono/tar.html#SEC132
http://www.it.cas.cz/manual/tar/html_node/tar_121.html
/Mike