Subject: bug#6268: closed (Re: bug#6268: Suggestion: truncate should allow -r and -s options together)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 09:48:02 +0000

Your bug report

#6268: Suggestion: truncate should allow -r and -s options together

which was filed against the coreutils package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

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6268: http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6268
GNU Bug Tracking System
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Subject: Re: bug#6268: Suggestion: truncate should allow -r and -s options together
From: Pádraig Brady <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 10:44:18 +0100
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

On 29/05/10 09:21, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> Subject: [PATCH] truncate: improve handling of non regular files
>>

> Thanks again.
> This all looks fine.

OK I pushed that with an addition to NEWS.

cheers,
Pádraig.

Subject: Suggestion: truncate should allow -r and -s options together
From: "Richard W.M. Jones" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 15:32:05 +0100
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

The manpage for truncate says:

  Note that the -r and -s options are mutually exclusive.

and indeed you cannot have both:

  $ truncate -r /tmp/ref -s +10M /tmp/new
  truncate: you must specify one of `--size' or `--reference'

We suggest using the 'truncate' command in the 'virt-resize'
documentation[1].  We want users to create a file which is the size of
an existing file + some extra amount.  Naturally this would be:

  truncate -r old-disk.img -s +1G new-disk.img

but this does not work and we have to suggest that users use two
separate 'truncate' commands[2].

Related to this feature request, it would be nice if you could suffix
a size with a % sign to indicate that you want to increase a file by a
certain percentage of the old or reference size, eg:

  truncate -r old-disk.img -s +10% new-disk.img

  truncate -r old-disk.img -s 110% new-disk.img

Neither of these forms work at the moment.

Rich.

[1] http://libguestfs.org/virt-resize.1.html#expanding_a_virtual_machine_disk
[2] http://git.annexia.org/?p=libguestfs.git;a=commitdiff;h=0e28e4104d96bf0bf5b88fb07bb7e5f9f6e6f41f#patch1

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