Hi.
I've just noticed that my system backups are huge compared to what i think they should be. On further investigation, I see the problem is that /var/log/lastlog is being backed up (FYI lastlog is a sparse file that looks like it is 2315068416 bytes in size on my system
)
tar doesn't handle sparse files well, unless you specify the --sparse option. Without that option the file is tarred up as if it was a file of the shown size... (which is why my backups are so big.)
(maybe the reason I'm seeing this is because I'm running a 64-bit OS - see this Fedora mailing list note
So has anyone else noticed this, and fixed it (besides deleting the file, or removed /var/log from the backups?)
I've just noticed that my system backups are huge compared to what i think they should be. On further investigation, I see the problem is that /var/log/lastlog is being backed up (FYI lastlog is a sparse file that looks like it is 2315068416 bytes in size on my system

tar doesn't handle sparse files well, unless you specify the --sparse option. Without that option the file is tarred up as if it was a file of the shown size... (which is why my backups are so big.)
(maybe the reason I'm seeing this is because I'm running a 64-bit OS - see this Fedora mailing list note
So has anyone else noticed this, and fixed it (besides deleting the file, or removed /var/log from the backups?)