Leif Neland wrote to Ryan Thompson and Matt Dillon:
>
> What will happen, if somebody (possibly you, as mahordomo says), tries to
> make a backup of that file.
Make sure to use a program that can cope ;-)
> Will the copy also be with holes, or would that file suddenly use all 96GB?
> It will at least do so, if one does cat file>file.bak
> Probably tar will do the same.
Actually, tar will handle holes elegantly (this I have tested), with the
--sparse option. Older versions would not. cat and other similar
"filters" are naive, as they simply block I/O.
Backing up with tar and/or a filesystem dump would be just as effective as
with any other storage strategy.
cat file > file.bak on even a 2GB file is probably not something that
would be popular, anyway.
> I'd be afraid to create something which could easily blow up by having
> normal operations applied to it.
That's a valid concern. That's the biggest drawback I see to the overall
strategy... But, specialized problems sometimes encourage specialized
solutions.
>
> Leif
>
--
Ryan Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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