Re: does XFS supports hole punching ?

[Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 01:57:08PM +0200, Raz wrote:
> Dave Hello
> I would be grateful if you help me here. man xfsctl was not clear enough.
> I have written a small program that compares the behavior of FREESP
> and UNRESERVE.
> I create a file size 10M, each 1M is filled with aaa.. 2-nd MB filled with bbb
> 3-rd with ccc and so on. I am trying to punch a hole with the bellow program
> and then inspect the file content, size and block map.
> 
> 1.  XFS_IOC_FREESP64 seems to be truncating the file and does not
> create a hole.
> 2.  XFS_IOC_UNRESERVE64 creates a hole and leaves the file size
> unchanged. as the man
>     page says.
> /d1/holely:
>         0: [0..14335]: 96..14431 14336 blocks
>         1: [14336..16383]: hole 2048 blocks
>         2: [16384..20479]: 16480..20575 4096 blocks
> Do a hole blocks count as a the file-system free space  ?

There is no such thing as a "hole block". It's a sparse file - where
there is a hole there are no blocks. i.e. holes are free space.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com