Copying Sparse files?

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Reg Clemens wrote:
> I need to copy a sparse file from one partition to another.
> Actually, I need to copy it to an intermediate file,  move that file to 
> another machine,
> repartition, and then bring the sparse file back.
> 
> The sparse copy is not that hard to write,- someone must have one, but my 
> scanning
> of Fedora  with 'man -k sparse' and 'man -k copy' don't find anything.
> 
> Standard copy routines (and scp and tar) are not an option, as they will 
> expand the
> file by a factor of more than 1000 from a little over 1MB to over 1GB.  Ive 
> thought
> of dump/restore (which doesnt seem to exist for Linux), and rdist, but both 
> seem
> more complicated to setup than this problem deserves).
> 
> Any thoughts?
> Otherwise Ill have to write something tonight.

Well, both cp and tar will handle sparse files. In this case, you
will probably want to use tar with the -S or --sparse option.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!