sdd - disk dump and restore to and from tape or file; copy and/or reblock
sdd [ option=value ] [ -flag ]
Sdd copies the specified input file to a specified output file performing
the requested conversions. The standard input and output are used by default.
The input and output block size may be specified to take advantage of raw
physical I/O.
After completion, sdd reports the number of whole records, the sum
of bytes from partial input and output blocks and the total amount in kilo
bytes on inout and output.
If ibs and obs differ, sdd is faster than
dd due to the use of an intelligent algorithm.
- -help
- Print a summary of the available options.
- if=name
- Input is taken from file name; default is stdin.
If sdd is installed suid root, name may be in
remote syntax: user@host:filename as in rcp(1) even if invoked by
non root users. See SUID NOTES for more information.
To make a file local although it includes a colon (:), the
filename must start with: '/', './' or '../'
- of=name
- Output is taken from file name; default is stdout. Note that
sdd creates and truncates the output file by default; therefore the
oseek=# option is useless without the -notrunc option except
in special cases such as using magnetic tape or disk special files.
If sdd is installed suid root, name may be in
remote syntax: user@host:filename as in rcp(1) even if invoked by
non root users.
Note that if sdd talks to an old rmt remote tape
server, it does not open a remote file with the O_CREAT open flag
because this would be extremely dangerous. If the rmt server on
the other side is the rmt server that comes with star or
the GNU rmt server, sdd may use the symbolic mode for the
open flags. Only the symbolic open modes allow to send all possible open
modes in a portable way to remote tape servers.
It is recommended to use the rmt server that comes with
star. It is the only rmt server that gives platform
independent compatibility with BSD, Sun and GNU rmt clients and
it includes security features that may be set up in
/etc/default/rmt.
- -inull
- Do not read input from file. This is similar to if=/dev/zero but much
faster. Sdd uses a prepared cleared buffer to satisfy writes.
- -onull
- Do not produce any output. This is similar to of=/dev/null
but actually does not write to any file.
- ibs=#, obs=#, bs=#
- Set input block size, output block size or both to # (default 512
Bytes).
- cbs=#
- Set Conversion buffer size to #.
- ivsize=#, ovsize=#
- Set input volume size or output volume size to #. You can make copies from
devices of different size by using this option. If you want to make a copy
to a tape having a size of 60 MBytes you should use the option
ovsize=60M. If the capacity of the tape is exceeded,
sdd will ask for a second volume. In case ivsize is
exceeded, if N<cr> is typed, it is treated as an EOF
condition and sdd writes any buffered data to output and exits. In
case ovsize is exceeded, if N<cr> is typed, sdd
stops and the statistics it prints show that more data were read than
written.
- count=#
- Transfer # of input records or until EOF.
- iseek=#, iskip=#
- Seek/skip the first # Bytes from input before beginning transfer.
- oseek=#, oskip=#
- Seek/skip the first # Bytes from output before beginning transfer.
- seek=#, skip=#
- Seek/skip the first # Bytes from input and output before beginning
transfer.
- ivseek=#, ovseek=#
- Seek # Bytes from input/output at the beginning of each
input/output volume before beginning transfer. (You can skip labels of
disks and floppies with this option.) Note that the iseek/oseek
options still work, but only apply to the first volume. Their values are
added to the values of ivseek and ovseek.
- -notrunc
- Do not truncate an already existing output file before beginning transfer.
This enables it to copy one file into another.
- -pg
- Print a dot to stderr each time a record is written to indicate
progress.
- secsize=#
- Set the basic buffersize for error recovery via -noerror to
#. The default is 512 to match the most usual physical sector size.
Since error recovery is done at the level of the basic buffer size, you
need to use this option in error recovery mode in case you are accessing a
drive with a different physical sector size than 512 bytes.
- -time, -t
- Report the total time and the transfer rate.
- -noerror
- Do not stop transfer on I/O errors. Error messages will appear on the
screen. If this option is used and -noseek has not been specified
as well, ibs and obs need to be multiples of the error
recovery blocksize specified via secsize=#.
- -noerrwrite
- Do not write blocks that are not read correctly. Seek on the output to
skip the bad block. The output file must be seekable or -noerrwrite
will not work correctly.
- -noseek
- Do not seek after I/O errors. This implies try=1.
- try=#
- Set retry count to #. Only if -noerror was specified.
(default 2)
- -debug
- Turn on debugging messages. You can get knowledge about record sizes on
tapes with variable record size with this option.
- -fill
- Pad every output record with zeros up to obs. If ibs equals
obs, or only bs was specified, every record will be padded
with zeros, otherwise this only applies to the last record.
- -swab
- Swaps bytes (except for the last byte in odd block sizes and odd transfers
due to EOF).
- -block, -unblock
- Convert fixed length records to variable records and vice versa.
- -lcase, -ucase
- Map alphabetics to lower/upper case.
- -ascii, -ebcdic, -ibm
- Convert EBCDIC to ASCII resp. ASCII to EBCDIC
resp. ASCII to the IBM variant of EBCDIC.
- -help
- Prints a short summary of the sdd options and exists.
- -md5
- Compute the md5 sum for the data. If the option -onull was used,
sdd computes the md5 sum on the input data, otherwise the output
data is used.
- -version
- Prints the sdd version number string and exists.
sdd if=/dev/rsd0a of=/dev/nrst8 bs=2x7x17b
Copies the disk /dev/rsd0a to the tape /dev/nrst8
using a record size of 2*7*17 blocks. (this is 2 Cylinders.)
sdd if=/dev/rsd0c of=/dev/rsd1c seek=1b bs=63k
Copy the whole disk sd0 to sd1 preserving the old
label on disk sd1.
dd(1), star(1), rmt(1), tr(1), cp(1), copy(1)
sdd: Read f records + p bytes (total of x bytes = d.nnk).
sdd: Wrote f records + p bytes (total of x bytes = d.nnk).
The number of full records, the number of bytes in partial records
and the total amount of data in KBytes.
With the QUIT signal ( usually ^\ ) the actual state is
displayed.
Opposed to dd, sdd is able to handle -iseek -oseek -seek as well
as -iskip -oskip -skip regardless to the buffer size. You can make a
whole physical copy of a disk without copying the label in one pass of
sdd.
When numbers are unspecified the are taken to be bytes.
You can make them `words' (2 bytes) if they are followed by a `w'
or `W'.
You can make them blocks (512 bytes) if they are followed by a `b'
or `B'.
You can make them Kbytes (1024 bytes) if they are followed by a
`k' or `K'.
You can make them Mbytes (1024 * 1024 bytes) if they are followed
by a `m' or `M'.
You can make them Gbytes (1024 * 1024 *1024 bytes) if they are
followed by a `g' or `G'.
A pair of numbers may be separated by `*' or `x' to indicate a
product.
If sdd is installed suid root, sdd is able to make connections to
remote files for non root users. This is done by using the rcmd(3) interface
to get a connection to a rmt(1) server.
Sdd resets its effective uid back to the real user id
immediately after setting up the remote connection to the rmt server and
before opening any other file.
The option iskip=# and oskip=# and
skip=# as well as -block and -unblock are not
implemented.
It is confusing to allow the use of all additions together with
the record counter -count as they are possible with
obs=#.