Fwd: strange strange problem! (please help!!)

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 02:10:12PM -0800, Globe Trotter wrote:

> --- Nifty Hat Mitch <mitch48 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 07:53:54PM +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:
> > > David Hoffman wrote:
> > > > Is it possible that you might have some symlinks in your "me"
> > > > directory and when you are copying files you might be actually copying
> > > > more than the 21Gb you think are there?
> > > 
> > > Globe Trotter replied:
> > > > Not that I know of. Is it possible to figure this out?
> > > 
> > > find /usr/local/me -type l -ls
> > > 
> > > I still think you ought to be copying stuff over subdirectory by
> > > subdirectory, and checking to see which one gets so much larger.
> > 
> > Files with wholes?
> 
> Sorry....don't get it...

Well no wonder, I cannot spell,  holes, whole.... wrong time of
the day for me.

The whole thing about holes in files is best researched with "sparse"
as the key word.

Tar and rsync both have flags to do the right thing.

    tar --sparse

    rsync --sparse

A VERY sparse file might take days to transfer all the blocks of nulls
depending on which end of the wire the tool detects the blocks of
nulls and how you invoke the tool.  --sparse 'should' be specified 
on both ends.


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