Learn The DD Command

[AwesomeMachine]

This is by far the most useful linux command there is, and almost no one knows about it. It comes with every linux distro, old or new, and all UNIX. It has been around since the 1970's. Here is a link to the best dd tutorial.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=362506

[saikee]

Welcome AwesomeMachine,

You should find the standard here is higher than LQ and many members are pretty good in playing tunes with "dd", but not making it sing and dance as much as you do.

It is one of the wonders in Linux to me. Everybody knows Linux doesn't write on a NTFS partition but with "dd" we can clone a Xp system.

[CaptainPinko]

Everybody knows Linux doesn't write on a NTFS partition but with "dd" we can clone a XP system.

I bring you miracle of 2.6.15 (http://wiki.kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges) :

NTFS write support: NTFS finally implements write support so "vim /ntfs/foo.txt" works. You can write(2) to a file even beyond the end of the existing file. Resident non-resident files and are supported. Sparse files can also be written and holes will be filed appropriately. truncate(2), ftruncate(2) and open(2) with O_TRUNC flag also works.


however:

There're some limitations with heavily fragmented files which you won't be allowed to change. Also, notice that creation/deletion of files and directories is still not supported and mmap(2) based writes is still not complete


But I think this means we are getting awfully close.

Cheers.

[saikee]

Captain Pinko,

Thanks for the tip.

I seldom have a need to write on a NTFS because I keep my personal data in a Fat32 partition accessible by all systems. Had tried out a few alternatives like Captive write etc but not always yield results.

My prediction is a lot of damage can be done to XP and Win2k if there is no hurdle to write on NTFS partitions by the newcomers.

We may be able to make a living out of just advising users how to salvage the Winodws systems. :D

[CyberCat]

This is by far the most useful linux command there is, and almost no one knows about it. It comes with every linux distro, old or new, and all UNIX. It has been around since the 1970's. Here is a link to the best dd tutorial.Thanks so much! I've been looking all over to find out how to make a bootable usb of an image file. I figured it was with dd but some places I found said to use cat > (I think that was for extracting actually)

Anyway thanks!

[Mercian]

Hello all, this is my firs posting here. I would like to burn a CD ISO image (less than 700MB) onto my 16GB USB flash drive so I can boot into that distribution on my Asus Eee PC laptop (no CD/DVD drive). Since I am new to the dd command I am hesitant to do it right now as I don't want to wipe the HDD on this computer. I would like to be able to store other files on the disc after the image has been written to it. Would I need to create a CD sized partition on it or won't that make any difference?

Can someone help me please?

Thanks in advance.

M.

[saikee]

Mercian,

Welcome to Justlinux!

You don't dd an iso image.

You mount the iso image on a loopback device so that you can see all the files and folders. You can then do drag and drop into your flash drive.

The iso image comes with isolinux which for booting from a CD/DVD. Therefore you need to change it to a disk based boot loader like Grub.

You may find this thread (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150078) useful. The thread has an extension on how to put several iso on a USB drive.

[retsaw]

Unetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) is a useful tool for creating a bootable USB stick from an .iso file. It's easy to use and has worked for me every time I've tried it, but it doesn't preserve the boot menu from the CD and will only let you put one bootable .iso per USB drive AFAIK. Due to these limitations I tend to prefer copying the files and using syslinux to boot it (since syslinux can use the isolinux configuration file with a simple name change), but that is a bit more work that using unetbootin.

[mike_flow]

Mercian:

I haven't tried this program yet, but seems useful. I know it runs on windows, but if you have wine installed you might be able to use it on linux.

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Greetings

[Mercian]

Thanks for your help, they seem like just the ticket :) I shall get started right away. I plan to use it to install Linux from Scratch onto my laptop and use it as a test-bed machine from which to learn more about Linux :)

M.

[blackbelt_jones]

Linux is case sensitive, so it's not just nitpicking to point on that you've got DD where you should have dd. Or am I confused somehow?