Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 03:40:06 -0500 From: Alan Bawden <alan@curry.epilogue.com> Subject: --sparse doesn't work Message-ID: <199503180840.DAA03693@curry.epilogue.com>
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Description: The `--sparse' option to tar has no effect whatsoever. Repeat-By: Create a sparse file named "temp". (Open a new file, seek out a few megabytes, write out a single non-zero byte, close the file.) Do: tar --create --sparse --file temp.tar temp Observe that temp.tar is larger than temp. If --sparse was working, it would be smaller. Fix: Add the line "CFLAGS+= -DBSD42=1" to /src/gnu/usr.bin/tar/Makefile. This is originally a problem with the configure script that the GNU folks wrote for GNU tar. It contains a totally lame test for setting the BSD42 flag, which fails under FreeBSD, and about the only thing that depends on that flag is the handling of `--sparse'. I have already reported this problem to bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.
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