[plug] splitting very large files

[James Devenish]

In message <Pine.LNX.4.58.0408061614550.6178 at ob.localnet>
on Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 04:21:58PM +0800, Michael Holland wrote:
> Is there any way to split large files (many GB) on disk (ext3) without
> copying?

Thanks for specifying ext3 -- I suspect that a solution to this problem
is likely to be filesystem-dependent. It is hard for me to imagine POSIX
calls that could achieve this summarily. My first thought is to do
something like replicating inodes (including block allocations). I do
not know if this is the sort of thing that can be achieved in the VFS
layer, so perhaps there is no standard off-the-shelf tool. You might
want to search specifically for ext2/ext3 tools (maybe some ext2
'toolkit' programme will have the ability that you require).