Re: [Bug-ddrescue] bug/feature request: sparse file to block device

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hello Steven,

Sorry for the very late answer, but I lost track of your message.


Steven Noonan wrote:
> It seems that ddrescue doesn't like using -S with block device output
> targets. My use case is copying a sparse file (QEMU raw disk image)
> onto an empty physical volume. I'd like to avoid doing 'dd
> if=sparsefile of=/dev/sdf' because zeros from the sparse file will be
> written to the target.

Unless by 'empty' you mean 'filled with zeros' the resulting copy would 
be incorrect and it would be impossible to fix it (short of repeating 
the copy).

But given that writing directly to devices is not a task for beginners, 
I may change ddrescue to allow such 'sparse' writes (documenting it 
clearly, of course).


Best regards,
Antonio.