lastlog devours universe

[Michael Wiktowy]

Jesse Keating wrote:

>On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 16:37 -0400, Michael Wiktowy wrote:
>  
>
>>In your experience, is there a reason not to use --sparse in most occasions?
>>    
>>
>And then we have an even longer thread about tar changing it's default
>behavior and pissing off even MORE admins who have been using tar for
>decades on not just Linux.  That is a VERY silly suggestion.
>  
>

Well ... long threads are fine if they stay constructive and informative.

I'll ask again because I honestly don't know the answer:

Is there a reason not to use --sparse in most occasions?


Call me an ignorant newb if it makes you feel better, but I would like 
an answer from someone knowledgable since all my Googling indicates:
- there is just a slight slowdown since it has to read the file twice 
(Andy Ross' test only covered one condition ... I would imagine tarring 
a 1.4TB file takes a long time *any* way you do it.)
- there is a large slowdown on compressing a sparse file
- there is some indication that sparse file handling should be automatic 
and the --sparse option removed completely

Ref:
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_mono/tar.html#SEC132
http://www.it.cas.cz/manual/tar/html_node/tar_121.html

/Mike