Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com Message-ID: <00be01c31e15$944d0d50$78d96f83@pomello> From: "Max Bowsher" To: "Bill C. Riemers" Cc: References: <16072.892.778395.24290@gargle.gargle.HOWL><003901c31d8c$6ec495f0$78d96f83@pomello> <16072.6666.10124.338022@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <00f301c31e12$c29efdb0$6400a8c0@FoxtrotTech0001> Subject: Re: SPARSE files considered harmful - please revert Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 15:47:32 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Bill C. Riemers wrote: > Only executable files should be sparse files... Under Linux, the executable > bit is checked by cp. (Or at least this was true several years ago, when I > last looked at the code.) Only if the file is marked as executable is it > possibly made sparse. I haven't looked in the code, but there is absolutely no mention of this in the man page. > Granted sometimes you do have a data file which can be made sparse. > However, unless you are familiar with the code used to read the file, this > is very dangerous. So this should be decided on a case by case basis. Um? By my understanding, making a file sparse can never be dangerous. It can cause sub-optimal performance, but code reading the file doesn't have to be aware of anything special - the OS takes care of it. Max. -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/