On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 01:00:55AM +0000, Pádraig Brady wrote: > On 01/23/2014 09:28 PM, Rodrigo Campos wrote: > > 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 :)). > > > This functionality is useful. > Would it be possible to just add to fallocate with --punch-hole=sparse or something? Totally, that's an option too :) > Also dd has the conv=sparse option, so maybe this functionality can be added there. But how are you going to do a hole in-place in a portable fashion ? I don't know of any > We're currently discussing that on the GNU coreutils mailing list. You mean the thread "making a file sparse - in-place?" started after this thread ? 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
