The dump or ufsdump on solaris works like that as it opens the raw disk for 
reading. 


On Tuesday 20 December 2005 20:38, Tim Mooney wrote:
> In regard to: RE: [Networker] any tips for backing up enormous sparse...:
> > on reading the manpage to the end, it says that you can't specify it
> > yourself. it just comes into play when the disk block count does not
> > match the byte size for a file...
> >
> > i have been reading up on sparse files.... unless the o/s (filesystem
> > provider) gives you a function to read only the real blocks of a sparse
> > file you have to read all the way through the file.... I can't find
> > anything specific in solaris, and if there is such a thing for linux
> > filesystems it may be that legato is not coded to use it....
>
> Thanks for the additional information on this!  I can't find any
> specific interface for this (I would expect it to be part of either the
> fcntl, open, or read system calls) on Linux either.
>
> I'm also guessing that you're correct about your last point too -- even
> if there is one, NetWorker probably isn't using it (yet).  If I discover
> there is some API for doing this, I'll report back.
>
> Tim
>
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