Why does reading a file with hexdump sometimes change find's sparseness value (%S)?
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votes
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answer
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I use a Lustre file system. I've noticed that if I look at the find's sparseness value (
%S
) for a file, then print the file with hexdump
, then look at the find's sparseness value again, then sometimes find's sparseness value (%S
) has changed. Why does it change?
---
Command to look at the find's sparseness value (%S
) for the file myvideo.mp4
:
find myvideo.mp4 -printf "%S"
Command to read the file myvideo.mp4
with hexdump
:
hexdump myvideo.mp4
---
I noticed that behavior on several files. Examples of changes of find's sparseness values (%S
):
- 0.000135559
to 0.631297
- 0.00466808
to 0.228736
Is it because the file is being cached partly locally when reading with hexdump
? I noticed that this change isn't specific to hexdump
, e.g. the same happens with nano
(and likely any other program that read the file):
dernoncourt@server:/videos$ find myvideo.mp4 -printf "%S"
0.00302331
dernoncourt@server:/videos$ nano myvideo.mp4
dernoncourt@server:/videos$ find myvideo.mp4 -printf "%S"
0.486752
Asked by Franck Dernoncourt
(5533 rep)
Mar 10, 2024, 02:37 AM
Last activity: Mar 10, 2024, 10:33 PM
Last activity: Mar 10, 2024, 10:33 PM