The Real dd

• dd is a command-line utility used to convert and copy files (highly configurable)
• You might recognize dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null
• The real dd performs block level I/O, as opposed to filesystem-level I/O, for increased performance
• As a result, if misused, it can corrupt your hard disk/SSD (be very careful running this as root)
• You will be implementing this tool using file-level I/O (fread, fwrite, etc.)

Applications of dd

• Data transfer, and in-place modification of files
• Wiping disks for security (e.g. prior to recycling hardware)
  • Contents of a file are not necessarily overwritten on regular deletion
• Generating files with random data (will be useful for testing in upcoming Networking MP)
• “Flashing” / installing custom ROMs (enhanced versions of vanilla OS) on Android devices

Notable dd parameters

• if=FILE: read from FILE instead of stdin
• of=FILE: write to FILE instead of stdout
• bs=BYTES: bs is the block size; read and write up to BYTES bytes at a time (default: 512);
• count=N: copy only N input blocks
• seek=N: skip N obs-sized blocks at start of output
• skip=N: skip N ibs-sized blocks at start of input

What our dd will look like

• -i <file>: input file (defaults to stdin)
• -o <file>: output file (defaults to stdout)
• -b <size>: block size, the number of bytes copied at a time (defaults to 512)
• -c <count>: total number of blocks copied (defaults to the entire file)
• -p <count>: number of blocks to skip at the start of the input file (defaults to 0)
• -k <count>: number of blocks to skip at the start of the output file (defaults to 0)

Use getopt()

• getopt parses function arguments passed through the command line.
• Specify and handle all special case function parameters. getopt(argc, argv, "i:o:b:c:p:k:")

Blocks

• A block is a unit measuring the number of bytes that are read or written at one time.
• Hard drives / SSDs have a sector (block) size of 4 kB
• This means read/write operations to the disk can only address 4 kB portions at a time.
• If you write a 64 kB file to the disk, it will be broken down into 16 writes of 4 kB each

./dd -i input_file -o output_file -b 256 -> specifies a block size of 256 bytes