Re: [Mldonkey-users] file sizes in temp directory

[Goswin Brederlow]

Matthias Witassek <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> the size of all files in my temp directory for mldonkey is about as
> twice as the size of my harddisk - at least it is shown this way.
> Physically it must be correct, because I've never had any problems while
> downloading.

mldonkey uses the sparse files feature of the filesystem. It allows
one to create files with big holes in them. You can for example create
a 7 Exabyte (8070450532247928832 byte) big file on a floppy disk if
nearly all of it is hole.

The way to create sparse files is easy, you seek somewhere into the
file and just write there. Any place you haven't written to is a hole
and takes no space on the fs.

As mldonkey downaloads a file it will seek around in the file and
place the incoming data where it belongs. Over time all holes will
fill up with actual data and the file takes up more and more space up
to its reported size.

"du -h temp" will show you the actual used size as will "ls -l" in the
summary at the beginning while "wc --bytes temp/*" will show you the
size the files will use when finished.



As to how to copy them, see Falks mail.

MfG
        Goswin