{"action":"opened","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/corbinlc/gnuroot/issues/46","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/corbinlc/gnuroot/issues/46/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/corbinlc/gnuroot/issues/46/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/corbinlc/gnuroot/issues/46/events","html_url":"https://github.com/corbinlc/gnuroot/issues/46","id":56352155,"number":46,"title":"Small files take up much space","user":{"login":"gphilip","id":1097521,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1097521?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip","html_url":"https://github.com/gphilip","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gphilip/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":null,"comments":0,"created_at":"2015-02-03T09:18:55Z","updated_at":"2015-02-03T09:18:55Z","closed_at":null,"body":"Firstly, thank you for this great software.\r\n\r\nI ran across this issue while trying to use offlineimap in GnuRoot Wheezy. The installation went fine, but trying to transfer my existing mail corpus  over to a GnuRoot (i) took way too much time to complete, and (ii) resulted in way too much of the (external) sdcard being used up. Investigating a bit, I found that (at least) the latter was due to the huge number of small files (4.0K or less) that offlineimap creates to do its thing. \r\n\r\nSo the issue is: each small file (of size, say, a few kilobytes) created on GnuRoot Wheezy takes up 128K of space. This is a showstopper for my use case, since my 7GB email archive blows up to a few tens of GB when extracted on GnuRoot, thereby exhausting my external sdcard. \r\n\r\nI made the following test case to illustrate this:\r\n\r\n--------------\r\nTest Case\r\n--------------\r\n\r\n1. Create a single file of ~200 KB (Can use /dev/zero if /dev/random is not available or is slow):\r\n\r\n    $ dd if=/dev/random of=master.file bs=1 count=200000\r\n     ....\r\n    $ du -h master.file\r\n    256K    master.file\r\n\r\n2. Split this file into umpteen pieces, each of size a hundred bytes:\r\n\r\n    $ split -b 100 -a 4 master.file\r\n  \r\n  (This could take some time.. .)\r\n\r\n3. Check the space used up by the collection of split files:\r\n\r\n  $ du -chs x*\r\n  128K    xaaaa\r\n  128K    xaaab\r\n      ....\r\n      ....\r\n  128K   xacyx\r\n   250M  total\r\n\r\n   --------------\r\nEnd Test Case\r\n  --------------\r\n\r\nIs there a workaround? Am I doing things wrong somehow, causing small files to take up much space?\r\n\r\nThank you!\r\n\r\n\r\n"}}