Phantom - a phantomblock generator (sparse files)
This tool removes blocks of 0x00 from files by replacing them with phantomblocks. That way, a file uses less diskspace while its contents hasn't changed at all!
Beware: after copying these files with tar, cp, cpio or any other tool, the phantomblocks have been replaced with 0x00-blocks again!
This program should work not only on Linux but on Solaris as well (2.6 at least).
Version 1.1 implements a new "replace" option, so that one could do, for example the following:
find / -type f -print | xargs -n 1 phantom -r -i
This would go trough the whole harddisk, scan all files and generate 0x00-blocks where necessary.
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Changelog
1.2 setuid and such is now correctly set on the new file
1.1 added "replace" option
Thanks
Thanks to Otto Vox for some enhancements and fixes.
Commercial
