How to create a file with a given size in Linux?

Question

For testing purposes I have to generate a file of a certain size (to test an upload limit).

What is a command to create a file of a certain size on Linux?

Answer 1

On OSX (and Solaris, apparently), the mkfile command is available as well:

mkfile 10g big_file

This makes a 10 GB file named "big_file". Found this approach here.

Answer 2

Use this command:

dd if=$INPUT-FILE of=$OUTPUT-FILE bs=$BLOCK-SIZE count=$NUM-BLOCKS

To create a big (empty) file, set $INPUT-FILE=/dev/zero.
Total size of the file will be $BLOCK-SIZE * $NUM-BLOCKS.
New file created will be $OUTPUT-FILE.

Answer 3

Just to follow up Tom's post, you can use dd to create sparse files as well:

dd if=/dev/zero of=the_file bs=1 count=0 seek=12345

This will create a file with a "hole" in it on most unixes - the data won't actually be written to disk, or take up any space until something other than zero is written into it.

Answer 4

You can do it programmatically:

#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main() {
    int fd = creat("/tmp/foo.txt", 0644);
    ftruncate(fd, SIZE_IN_BYTES);
    close(fd);
    return 0;
}

This approach is especially useful to subsequently mmap the file into memory.

use the following command to check that the file has the correct size:

# du -B1 --apparent-size /tmp/foo.txt

Be careful:

# du /tmp/foo.txt

will probably print 0 because it is allocated as Sparse file if supported by your filesystem.

see also: man 2 open and man 2 truncate

Answer 5

dd if=/dev/zero of=my_file.txt count=12345

Answer 6

you could do:

[dsm@localhost:~]$ perl -e 'print "\0" x 100' > filename.ext

Where you replace 100 with the number of bytes you want written.