Re: Ext2fs and hashed table.

Matti Aarnio (matti.aarnio@tele.fi)
Thu, 5 Jun 1997 10:37:24 +0300 (EET DST)


David S. Miller <davem@jenolan.rutgers.edu> commented:
> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 01:51:58 +0300 (EET DST)
> From: Matti Aarnio <matti.aarnio@tele.fi>
>
> Yes, sparse files make a lot of sense.
>
> Except for the administrator of a machine with evil users who
> purposesly make files with huge holes in them, the volume gets backed
> up to tape using tar and fits, he tries to restore it later and lo and
> behold the disk lacks the room for the files. Classic problem.

Sure, so now you know why Berkeley people created DUMP/RESTORE
programs for the BSD/FFS file system. Files won't grow, as
blocks filled with zero bytes are copied as is, while the holes
are not copied.

To do extent handling, we need to update the ext2dump program too.
(And e2fsck, and ...)

> 8-)
> David S. Miller, davem@caip.rutgers.edu /_____________/ / // /_/ ><

/Matti Aarnio <matti.aarnio@tele.fi>