Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 21:41:55 -0500 From: "Pierre A. Humblet" To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: cygwin-1.3.21-1, problem with sparse file creation as default Message-ID: <20030314024154.GA33739617@hpn5170x> Mail-Followup-To: "Pierre A. Humblet" , cygwin AT cygwin DOT com References: <3E70AD52 DOT 744 DOT D4BC055 AT localhost> <000801c2e974$0a0541b0$78d96f83 AT pomello> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <000801c2e974$0a0541b0$78d96f83@pomello> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 03:20:10PM -0000, Max Bowsher wrote: > > We've had no proof of advantages (except in one very restricted corner > case), and no disproof of disadvantages (i.e. speed penalties). > Max, Running a speed test would be interesting of course, but I point to an advantage for most of us: with 32 bit uids the /var/log/lastlog file can become enormous. Fortunately (for systems that support sparse files), it is sparse. The example below also demonstrates that cp preserves sparseness by default. /var/log: cp lastlog lastlog2 /var/log: cat lastlog > lastlog3 /var/log: ls -l lastlog* -rw-rw-rw- 1 p-humble sw 3055044 Mar 13 11:23 lastlog -rw-rw-rw- 1 p-humble sw 3055044 Mar 13 12:06 lastlog2 -rw-rw-rw- 1 p-humble sw 3055044 Mar 13 12:07 lastlog3 /var/log: du lastlog* 64 lastlog 64 lastlog2 2880 lastlog3 Pierre -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/