[SOLVED] impossible large file on filesystem

cdvries · 01-09-2015, 12:13 PM

One file on my filesystem is larger than my volume.
My SSD in my laptop is only 128G big but the file /var/lib/libvirt/images/Windows7.img is 256G
How is this possible? Anyone?

Code:

energize images # pwd
/var/lib/libvirt/images
energize images # ls -hal
total 32G
drwx--x--x 2 root         root 4,0K jan  5 21:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root         root 4,0K nov 16 20:47 ..
-rw------- 1 libvirt-qemu kvm  256G jan  9 19:01 Windows7.img
energize images # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             110G   55G   49G  53% /
none                  4,0K     0  4,0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev                  3,9G  4,0K  3,9G   1% /dev
tmpfs                 785M  1,6M  784M   1% /run
none                  5,0M     0  5,0M   0% /run/lock
none                  3,9G  2,0M  3,9G   1% /run/shm
none                  100M   28K  100M   1% /run/user
/dev/sda1             511M  3,4M  508M   1% /boot/efi
/home/chris/.Private  110G   55G   49G  53% /home/chris
/dev/sdc1             1,8T   96G  1,7T   6% /media/chris/144e75c7-04c0-4965-aad2-7bb75155c611
energize images #

veerain · 01-09-2015, 12:39 PM

Because it may be using sparse file. In sparse file the space is not allocated fully but grows as data is filled.

cdvries · 01-09-2015, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veerain

Because it may be using sparse file. In sparse file the space is not allocated fully but grows as data is filled.

Thank you. I didn't know sparse files existed. Never heared of those kind of files.
I looked it up...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file

Habitual · 01-09-2015, 02:01 PM

Don't look at /proc/kcore then!

replica9000 · 01-10-2015, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Habitual

Don't look at /proc/kcore then!

Code:

# ls -lh /proc/kcore
-r-------- 1 root root 128T Jan 10 10:12 /proc/kcore

I can get my M$ friends jealous of how much storage space I have