What is this file?and how? 1

[jouell]

Say I have a normal file on an ext3 filesystem.

The fs is 20 GB, but the file is listed as greater than that, say 30 GB as reported by ls. How is this possible?

Thanks!
-John

 

[TonyGroves]

Are you sure you're reading the ls output correctly? "ls -l" shows the size in bytes. What size do you think the file really is?

 

[azimuth0]

ext3 will "compress" blocks filled entirely with 0s. If you have a lot of empty blocks, you can get over the filesystem limit quite easily.

: Daniel :

-

http://www.bitmuse.com/

 

[jouell]

Hi yes ls is definitely showing correctly.

 

[plamb]

please show us the output listing

 

[Trevoke]

Please show us the output listing of "ls -lh" ;-)

azimuth may be on to something though.

-Haben sie fosforos?
-No tiengo caballero, but I have un briquet.

 

[zeland]

azimuth0:
When you say 0, do you mean 0 as in null or zero as in the numeral 0?

Just for fun, I tried doing dd if=/dev/zero of=zerofile bs=1M. It filled all the free space as expected.


--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[hoinz]

I think azimuth0 is right.
A Google search for "sparse file" gives a lot of information.

 

[hoinz]

These links, amongst others, may be helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file

http://mldonkey.berlios.de/modules.php?name=Wiki&pagename=sparse files

 

[jouell]

Hi Thanks to all for the response.

This is more of a theory question, see my original post, I am looking for some ideas of the topic.

I think hoinz hit upon the answer, or at least one of them.

Any other thoughts anyone?