Re: [Bug-tar] sparse file to /dev/null

[Joerg Schilling]

Sergey Poznyakoff <address@hidden> wrote:

> Peter Vrabec <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > $ tar cf x.tar --sparse --totals x
> > Total bytes written: 10240 (10KiB, 75B/s)
> > 
> > but
> > 
> > $ tar cf /dev/null --sparse --totals x
> > tar: x: Cannot seek to 0: Bad file descriptor
> > Total bytes written: 21474846720 (21GiB, 4.1GiB/s)
> > tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
> > 
> > Because this bahavior cause some problem for Amanda.
...

> The second solution (see att. 2) will produce precise total size at the
> expense of execution time (sparse files will be scanned even when
> archiving to /dev/null).

This is what star implements since 1997....I believe this is the only
way that makes sense.



Jörg

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