urn:uuid:dac04788-378c-5224-b043-e707a6377cc7 Daniel Aleksandersen https://www.daniel.priv.no/ Copyright © 2021 Daniel Aleksandersen. https://www.ctrl.blog/assets/favicon/favicon.svg 2021-01-23T14:10:00Z weekly 10 urn:uuid:16597654-c539-4070-9e0e-4492d3665cfd 2021-01-23T14:10:00Z 2021-01-23T14:10:00Z

What would case a file-cloning attempt using the copy command to return “invalid argument”? It can be hard to identify the underlying issue.

<p>Most modern copy-on-write file systems, such as Btrfs and XFS, support file cloning. (OpenZFS being the notable exception.) However, the tools that support this space-saving innovation can be difficult to use. Here’s an example situation detailing how the simple copy (<code>cp</code>) command on Linux can make it hard to understand what’s going on.</p> <p><a href="https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/cp-reflink-einval.html">Read more …</a></p> urn:uuid:6b6aa72f-7588-4f1c-a2e3-9edf6d6b431b 2020-10-14T00:30:00Z 2020-10-14T00:30:00Z

Six percentage of each music files you’ve bought from Apple Music (iTunes Store) contain, literally, nothing. Why is Apple padding their music with zero-bytes?

<p>Have you ever bought a storage upgrade for your iPod, iPhone, or Mac to have more room for your Apple Music (formerly iTunes) digital music collection? You may have been filling it with gigabytes worth of empty space.</p> <p><a href="https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/apple-music-nullbytes.html">Read more …</a></p> urn:uuid:3afd4e8a-35a9-49dd-a2b1-36d96a03538a 2020-10-07T12:38:00Z 2020-10-07T12:38:00Z

Exploring whether deduplicating file systems or other deduplication alternatives can be used to reduce the storage cost of duplicated media content.

<p>Modern file systems like APFS, Btrfs, XFS, and ZFS support deduplicating whole files and chunks of files. The same applies to network sharing protocols like BitTorrent and IPFS. Can storage deduplication be used to reduce the storage requirement for something like the intro sequences of TV shows? What other options are there?</p> <p><a href="https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/deduplicate-tv-intros.html">Read more …</a></p> urn:uuid:eb685e96-177b-4046-9217-c35710f00e61 2020-09-30T15:20:00Z 2020-09-30T15:20:00Z

You can clone files on modern copy-on-write file systems in a way that doesn’t require extra storage space. But how do you tell a file, link, and clones apart?

<p>Except for the Apple File System (APFS), file systems don’t keep track of whether a file is a clone or has been cloned. The information is inconsequential to how modern file systems work. However, curious people might want to know whether a path is a regular file, symbolic- or hard link, or a clone of another file. This article is for you.</p> <p><a href="https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/distinguish-file-link-clone.html">Read more …</a></p> urn:uuid:0b0403e3-294a-4ed1-90dc-1e75481a13aa 2020-09-21T13:51:00Z 2020-09-21T13:51:00Z

You can instantly clone files on many copy-on-write (CoW) file systems. But how do you do that in different operating and file systems?

<p>File cloning is a feature of copy-on-write (CoW) file systems. It’s an immediate way to make duplicate copies of files without requiring a second copy to be stored. Here’s a quick overview of cloning-capable file systems and the system calls and commands required to take advantage of them on Linux, MacOS, Windows, and other operating systems.</p> <p><a href="https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/file-cloning.html">Read more …</a></p>