Exponential increase in Free Pages

Hi OpenLdap list

I have a question on how to interprite the Free Pages stat from mdb_copy. I may be reading this particular stat wrong.

After using the compact utility from mdb_copy -c, free page count will start at zero and immediately increase to where it left off before the compact then increases by a few.

I was just wondering if the free pages count is actually a free pages pointer where it left off instead of a count of total free pages.

Is it possible that the sparse file needs holes dug in using fallocate -d or something else.

Thank you!