&dhucpackage; &dhsection;

&dhpackage;

create a new COW file

          &dhpackage;
          -f
          COW_file
          backing_file

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the `&dhpackage;` command.

This manual page was written for the &debian; distribution because the original program does not have a manual page. Instead, it has documentation in HTML format; see below.

`&dhpackage;` is a small utility to create COW (Copy-On-Write) files without the need to run the full UML kernel.

NOTE: you can save a lot of disk space using COW files. When checking the size of the COW file in order to see the gobs of space that you're saving, make sure you use 'ls -ls' to see the actual disk consumption rather than the length of the file. The COW file is sparse, so the length will be very different from the disk usage.

## OPTIONS

`-f`

- Force overwrite of an exsiting COW file.

## EXAMPLES

Create a new COW file:

`&dhpackage;` rootfs_COW rootfs

Overwrite (destroying) an existing COW file:

`&dhpackage;` -f rootfs_COW rootfs

## SEE ALSO

The UserModeLinux-HOWTO

## AUTHOR

&dhpackage; was written by Steve Schnepp.

This manual page was written by &dhusername; &dhemail; for the &debian; system, based on material in the UserModeLinux-HOWTO by Rusty Russell.