Re: [PATCH] Rebasing on Padraig's gnulib fallocate module and cleaning up

[Eric Sandeen]

Pádraig Brady wrote:

...

> On a related note it looks like fallocate64() which is required
> on 32 bit systems will not be supported in glibc-2.10 as it
> was released as a glibc-2.11 symbol. That means that 32 bit `cp`
> built on glibc-2.10 will not allocate extents for a file,
> and likewise 32 bit `truncate --allocate` will resort to writing
> zeros when built on glibc-2.10.


Sorry for ignoring this thread and then chiming in late... but at least
for myself, "truncate --allocate" is a bit confusing.   At least in the
filesystem world, truncating and allocating are pretty much orthogonal,
so making a tool called "truncate" which has an "allocate" mode is a bit
odd to me.  It'd be kind of like having a "ls --du" command option.

I'd personally rather see a separate, dedicated fallocate tool ... but
maybe that's just me.  You might run it by the fsdevel-list, or maybe
I've bike-shedded enough already.  :)

thanks,
-Eric