Hi! I've written a small simple tool to make a file sparse without using extra disk space, it just digs holes on the file when possible. To dig the hole uses the Linux-specific fallocate(2) syscall with FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE. So, also, it only works on some file-systems. Do you think that util-linux would be a good place for such a simple, linux-only program ? The case I see it can be useful is to use on VM images file backed (or I wrote it with this in mind, at least :)). The code is quite simple, it's written in plain C (C99 actually) and doesn't have any external dependencies. You can see the gitweb here: http://sdfg.com.ar/git/?p=drill.git or just clone it from: git://sdfg.com.ar/drill.git Given that there is a fallocate tool that uses the other mode of fallocate(2) already, all the detection for fallocate is already there. So it should, I guess, be easy to integrate to the code-base, adding also the #ifndef fallocate.c has and that compatibility stuff. Also, as you can see in the commits, I just started it some days ago. So if you think it should have some other feature, or something else, please let me know :) I'm not sure how this work, but I can write a patch against util-linux if you think it can be added. If you know there is something I should particulary take into account for that, I will really appreciate if you let me know :) Thanks a lot, Rodrigo -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe util-linux" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
