Paul Eggert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> If you don't mind truncating first, how about this? >> >> true > /var/spool/whatever/foo >> dd bs=1 seek=2G of=/var/spool/whatever/foo < /dev/null > > Also, the latter command works even if the former command is omitted. > That is, by itself, that invocation of dd resizes > /var/spool/whatever/foo to 2 GiB, discarding or extending the file as > needed, which is what the original request asked for.
Hi Paul, That depends on your definition of "works". If you don't mind retaining the first 2GiB of content in a preexisting output file, then it works fine. But the initial truncation is required if you want to be sure it's a big sparse file with nothing but NUL bytes. Try this: echo foo > k dd bs=1 seek=2G of=k < /dev/null head -c4 k and note that it prints "foo\n". -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]