Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2012 00:17:44 -0500 (EST) From: Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@MIT.EDU> To: Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com> Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Suggestion for Handbook Message-ID: <alpine.GSO.1.10.1201070015390.882@multics.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <CA%2BtpaK3icCaP_uOJTC8R2mCoK0gcoxfm%2BVyrsYbc0iUFL2V-iQ@mail.gmail.com> References: <CA%2BtpaK3icCaP_uOJTC8R2mCoK0gcoxfm%2BVyrsYbc0iUFL2V-iQ@mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu, 5 Jan 2012, Adam Vande More wrote: > This page contain info on creating a disk image: > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks-virtual.html > > Of course the dd method works, but it might be better to use truncate(1) > instead of dd because it creates sparse files and is nearly as universal as > dd. > > E.g. "truncate -s 5k file.img" I think dd would be preferred precisely because it does not use sparse files -- all blocks for the image will be allocated. If a sparse file was used, and the physical disk became close to full, then when the system goes to make a write to the image and the backing file cannot be grown, things are unlikely to fail gracefully. -Ben Kaduk
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