dd anyone?

[Alan Dayley]

Robert N. Eaton said:
> To those of you who replied:
>
> Alan Dayley:  I keep forgetting 1k actually means 1024.  I had tried
> (among others) dd if=/home/bob/My_Documents/SBM/sbm.bin of=/mnt/floppy0
> bs=1440k.  This, of course, didn't work. When I tried ... of=/dev/fd0
> bs=1440k, that didn't work either.

Interesting...

> Darrin Chandler: Using ... of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 worked, producing a
> bootable floppy of Smart Boot Manager. (Yay!)

The 'bs' parameter is to set the block size of the data transfer.  In
other words, how many bytes should be moved with each read of 'if' and
write to 'of'.  I am not surprised that 'bs=512' worked since that is the
smallest block size for most storage devices.

'bs=1440k' was simply telling dd to read the entire file all at once and
then dump the entire thing to the floppy instead of breaking it up.  I am
curious as to what error you got with that value but it doesn't matter
now, so don't worry about it.

I'm glad you got something to work.

> Mark Davis: Didn't use ... of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=256 as the above
> suggestion worked. What does count=256 accomplish? I don't speak manpage
> very well, and I have yet to take advanced courses in either cryptic or
> arcane.  Thanks for the reference to Schroder's "A Linux Cookbook."
> "Running Linux, 3rd Edition" has a copyright date of 1999; ancient
> history in this fast moving field.

The 'count' paramter specifies how many transfers of 'bs' size should be
performed.  In the case of 'bs=512 count=256', dd will transfer 131,072
(128k) bytes, more than enough for the 108k file that Mark says he uses.

> Kenneth: You were absolutely right, my .iso was hosed. Wouldn't install,
> even with the help of Smart Boot Manager. (Boo!)

Ugh.  Burn it slow speed and try again.

> Thanks guys.

You are very welcome!

Alan