Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 22 Jul 2004 09:02:44 +0200 (CEST)
From:      Harti Brandt <harti@freebsd.org>
To:        Daniel Lang <dl@leo.org>
Cc:        Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject:   Re: NEW TAR
Message-ID:  <20040722085729.O9549@beagle.kn.op.dlr.de>
In-Reply-To: <20040721203105.GA55687@atrbg11.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>
References:  <Pine.GSO.4.61.0407211440210.28037@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> <20040721151427.GC54664@atrbg11.informatik.tu-muenchen.de> <40F963D8.6010201@freebsd.org> <20040720081051.GB3001@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> <B82A97D5-DA91-11D8-B0C4-000A95C893E4@lassitu.de> <Pine.GSO.4.61.0407211440210.28037@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> <20040721151427.GC54664@atrbg11.informatik.tu-muenchen.de> <20040721203105.GA55687@atrbg11.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Daniel Lang wrote:

DL>To Harti:
DL>I admit I don't know for sure, but to my understanding the handling
DL>of the sparse file is done in the filesystem layer and not in the 
DL>application, right? Then all possible performance benefit on reading
DL>a sparse file should be gained anyway. Regardless if the application
DL>(the archiver) knows about the locations of the gaps or not....

I know of at least one application that does sparse file handling in the 
sense that it tries to create sparse file when the underlying FS supports
it - that is my PDP11 emulator. I have even a special zcp utility that 
may re-sparse a file by copying it and looking for 0 blocks. It's not that 
p11 depends on the file system supporting sparse files - it just tries to 
use them if they are available.

Again, for tar it's a matter of speed. Didn't Tim say that with the 
current sparse file info layout (gtar) he needs more than one pass over 
the file?

harti



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040722085729.O9549>