NetBSD Problem Report #60532

From ivan@siamics.net  Mon Aug  3 08:32:37 2026
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Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2026 13:57:37 +0000
From: Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Subject: port truncate(1) from FreeBSD 
X-From4GNATS: "Ivan Shmakov via gnats" <gnats-admin@NetBSD.org>

>Number:         60532
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       port truncate(1) from FreeBSD
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    bin-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Aug 03 08:35:00 +0000 2026
>Last-Modified:  Mon Aug 03 16:55:01 +0000 2026
>Originator:     Ivan Shmakov
>Release:        NetBSD 10.1
>Organization:
Dbus-free station.
>Environment:
Architecture: x86_64
Machine: amd64
>Description:

	Please port truncate(1) [1] from FreeBSD:

 > NAME
 >     truncate - resize files or manage file space

 > SYNOPSIS
 >     truncate [-c] -s [+|-|%|/]size[SUFFIX] file ...
 >     truncate [-c] -r rfile file ...
 >     truncate [-c] -d [-o offset[SUFFIX]] -l length[SUFFIX] file ...

 > DESCRIPTION
 >     The truncate utility adjusts the length of each regular file
 >     given on the command-line, or performs space management with
 >     the given offset and the length over a regular file given on
 >     the command-line.

[1] http://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=truncate&sektion=1

	truncate(1) allows for directly changing the size of a file,
	including creating a sparse file.  In place of the old trick of
	using dd(1) to write a block at an offset of size minus one:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=bigdisk.2048.udf seek=9999999 count=1 

	(From newfs_udf(8).)  It becomes possible to create a sparse
	file like:

$ truncate -s5000000K -- bigdisk.2048.udf 

	Also, I find it occasionally convenient when recovering after
	adding arbitrary data to a file by accident; like, say:

$ date >> foo 
$ truncate -s-29 -- foo 

>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix:

>Audit-Trail:
From: Valery Ushakov <uwe@stderr.spb.ru>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/60532: port truncate(1) from FreeBSD
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2026 19:50:51 +0300

 Do we want FreeBSD version or Linux version?

 FreeBSD has `-d` (for which we lack the necessary kernel support) and
 it's `-o` means something different (it's a companion for `-d`,
 instead of Linux `--io-blocks`).

 -uwe

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