On Sun, Jan 02, 2011 at 08:35:39PM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote: > It was written that way because HPC applications writing to a shared > file normally write to an offset of task_num * task_data_size so > they do not overlap, and end up with a dense file. Similarly, > bittorrent and parallel FTP clients will write dense files after > seeking randomly around the file, and database files often end up > dense as well. > > I'd rather fix the relatively few applications that expect > permanently sparse files to use fadvise() to notify the kernel of > this. Agreed, and I'm not sure there are enough applications that expect permanently sparse files that's worth adding a new fadvise(). But if we do add a new fadvise(), the default should clearly be the current behavior. If someone knows of use cases where permanently sparse files are common, please let us know! - Ted -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
