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FALLOCATE(1)			 User Commands			  FALLOCATE(1)

NAME
       fallocate - preallocate space to a file

SYNOPSIS
       fallocate [-n] [-p] [-o offset] -l length filename

DESCRIPTION
       fallocate  is  used  to	preallocate blocks to a file.  For filesystems
       which support the fallocate system call, this is done quickly by	 allo‐
       cating blocks and marking them as uninitialized, requiring no IO to the
       data blocks.  This is much faster than creating a file  by  filling  it
       with zeros.

       As  of the Linux Kernel v2.6.31, the fallocate system call is supported
       by the btrfs, ext4, ocfs2, and xfs filesystems.

       The exit code returned by fallocate is 0 on success and 1 on failure.

OPTIONS
       The length and offset arguments may be followed by  binary  (2^N)  suf‐
       fixes  KiB,  MiB, GiB, TiB, PiB and EiB (the "iB" is optional, e.g. "K"
       has the same meaning as "KiB") or decimal (10^N) suffixes KB,  MB,  GB,
       PB and EB.

       -n, --keep-size
	      Do  not modify the apparent length of the file.  This may effec‐
	      tively allocate blocks past EOF, which can  be  removed  with  a
	      truncate.

       -p, --punch-hole
	      Punch  holes in the file, the range should not exceed the length
	      of the file.

       -o, --offset offset
	      Specifies the beginning offset of the allocation, in bytes.

       -l, --length length
	      Specifies the length of the allocation, in bytes.

       -h, --help
	      Print help and exit.

       -V, --version
	      Print version and exit.

AUTHORS
       Eric Sandeen ⟨sandeen@redhat.com⟩
       Karel Zak ⟨kzak@redhat.com⟩

SEE ALSO
       fallocate(2), posix_fallocate(3), truncate(1)

AVAILABILITY
       The fallocate command is part of the util-linux package and  is	avail‐
       able  from  Linux  Kernel Archive ⟨ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils
       /util-linux/⟩.

util-linux			September 2011			  FALLOCATE(1)

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