04 Jul 2013 Give DD a progress bar
This is a short description on how you can get a progress bar to your dd command or other commands as well using the command pv.
pv is a shell pipeline element to meter data passing through and can be installed using aptitude in Ubuntu.
# aptitude install pv
As an example I create a empty file with zeroes with a block size of 1MByte and it is going to be 1GByte in total
# dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1000 | pv -s 1G | dd of=/tmp/1G
1000+0 records in 165MB/s] [================================> ] 93% ETA 0:00:00
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 6.24504 s, 168 MB/s
1e+03MB 0:00:06 [ 160MB/s] [================================> ] 97%
2048000+0 records in
2048000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 7.90455 s, 133 MB/s
The file /tmp/1G is now filled with zeroes sizing 1GByte.
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
14 Nov 2011 How to corrupt a disk partition using dd
I wanted to test corruption of a 41TB XFS filesystem and the dd command was the perfect tool for the job.
I used a block size of 512 bytes and wrote 10 blocks of data from device /dev/urandom to the partition /dev/sdb1.
The “Seek” option specifies how many blocks are skipped, counting 100 blocks from the beginning of the partiton, before writing the random/corrupted data.
# dd bs=512 count=10 seek=100 if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb1
Caution!
This procedure WILL most likely corrupt your disk partition or files on the partition. Use it ONLY on test systems and with a valid backup!
Tags: dd
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
13 Jun 2009 Create a empty file using dd
How to create a empty/null file with a specified size
# dd if=/dev/zero of=destinationfile.bin bs=1024k count=100
This command creates a 100MB (1024k * 100) sized file.
Tags: dd
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
19 Mar 2009 Backup partition table
This post describes how you can backup your partition table for future recovery.
Backup
This example describes how you can backup the disk partition table on /dev/sda
dd if=/dev/sda of=sda.mbr bs=512 count=1
It’s also useful to keep a human readable copy of the disk layout for future reference
sudo fdisk -l > partitions.lst
Restore
This example shows how you can recover your file system using your partition table backup.
dd if=sda.mbr of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
This is a nice way to keep the information about your file system and will it help you in the future if you get disk corruption.
This does not only apply to linux partitions but all types of partitions.
Tags: backup, dd, fdisk, recovery
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
19 Jan 2009 Mount a RAID Reconstructor disk image in linux
This post came to life because I had gotten a image file of a 120GB linux ext2 RAID partition that I couldn’t access using Windows software. The partition had been rescued by RAID Reconstructor, a Windows software that can rebuild RAID arrays by combining the disks from the RAID and store it as one image file.
The solution was to use linux and try to mount it as a loop filesystem. My assumption was that the partition itself had an unknown offset, so I used this script to search and mount the partition. The script tries to mount the partition within the first 20000 blocks. I assume the block size is 512 bytes and I already know that the partition is formatted as ext2.
for ((i=0 ; $i < 20000 ; i=$i + 1)) ; do
mount -t ext2 -o loop,offset=$(($i * 512)) diskimage.img /mnt/point && break
done
If it succeeds you can issue the mount command to get the offset value to the mounted partition
# mount | grep diskimage /dev/loop0 on /mnt/point type ext2 (rw,offset=32256)
In my case the offset was 32256.
This script can also be used to mount a partition from a backup of your filesystem.
Example
This is my example disk I'm going to create an image of
# fdisk -l Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 14 112423+ 83 Linux /dev/hda2 15 96 658665 83 Linux /dev/hda3 97 3394 26491185 83 Linux /dev/hda4 3395 9729 50885887+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 3395 7218 30716248+ 83 Linux /dev/hda6 7219 8750 12305758+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 8751 9533 6289416 83 Linux /dev/hda8 9534 9729 1574338+ 83 Linux
Create a backup image of your entire disk
# dd if=/dev/hda of=imagefile.img
To mount one of these partitions as a loop filesystem you can issue a mount command and tell it the right offset. Use the script above if you don't know the offset, it will take the guesswork for you and mount the partition.
Example of mounting /dev/hda3 if the offset is known
# mount -t ext3 -o loop,offset=49664 /dev/hda3 /mnt/point
Determining the offset is easy when you know the disk geometry have access to the file table.
In this case the hda3 partition has an offset of 512 bytes * 96 blocks = 49664.
EDIT
This post could have been avoided if I had known about the linux tool TestDisk. testDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). It could also be used as a forensic tool.
Tags: dd, mount, offset, RAID Reconstructor, rescue, testdisk
Posted by Hans-Henry Jakobsen
