Re: cygwin-1.3.21-1, problem with sparse file creation as default

["Pierre A. Humblet" <pierre dot humblet at ieee dot org>]

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


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