This is not really a bug report, but you asked for information in the
info-pages without giving me another mail address. In the chapter about
cp invocation you write:
> `--sparse=WHEN'
> A "sparse file" contains "holes"--a sequence of zero bytes that
> does not occupy any physical disk blocks; the `read' system call
(...)
> The WHEN value can be one of the following:
(...)
> `never'
> Never make the output file sparse. If you find an
> application for this option, let us know.
Isn't that, what my mkswap manpage speaks of:
> To setup a swap file, it is necessary to create that file
> before running mkswap , e.g. using a command like
>
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=65536
>
> Note that a swap file must not contain any holes (so,
> using cp(1) to create the file is not acceptable).
(MKSWAP(8) Linux Programmer's Manual, Linux 2.2.4, 25 March 1999 from
the Suse 6.3 Distribution)