Re: Weirdness with du/df/my brain (latter more likely)

On 22.1.23. 22:06, Steve Fairhead wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I was cloning a server with rsync in preparation for a major upgrade (elderly
> OpenBSD to 7.2). I noticed that the home partition usage was a good deal greater
> on the new machine than the old (as seen by df).
>
> After a lot of analysis, I found that all user folders (and all other
> folders/partitions) were near-enough identical on both machines, except for one
> - my boss's ;) . After more analysis, I found that it was his Maildir (using
> dovecot) that was weird:
>
>   - Old machine: 49 GB
>   - New machine: 188 GB
>
> Figures as measured with du -sk, which I realise is sector-oriented, but
> still... And yes, my boss does a *lot* of email.
>
> After yet more testing, I did a recursive copy of the old 49 GB Maildir to a
> spare folder on the same home partition on the old machine. This came up, again,
> as 188 GB.
>
> (FWIW, Windows via Samba reported "140 GB; size on disk 204 GB" for both the
> original "49 GB" Maildir and the 188 GB copy.)
>
> I'm just puzzled, and clearly missing something. Can anyone enlighten me as to
> the large (nearly 4*) discrepancy?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve

Since you have the same result after copying the files on the same machine,
I would say that some of them are sparse, and you didn't preserve that.

For openrsync, I searched the man page, and didn't find any mention of "sparse",
so I don't know how it handles them.

If you are using "original" rsync, try with -S flag.

Best regards,

Zeljko