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Re: Wheezy release: CDs are not big enough any more...



[Samuel Thibault]
> > I think "cp" is even more straightforward.
> 
> Does cp accept that way since a long time?

I'm not sure, but I've been using things like "cp boot.img /dev/fd0"
for probably 10 or 15 years on various Linux and Unix systems.  (The
fact that I referred to a floppy drive may give some idea of how
long....)

I am not sure where the idea came from that reading or writing block
devices always requires 'dd', but if I were to guess, I'd say we can
blame tape drives (which aren't even block devices, but char devices).
As I recall, you can choose the block size when you format or write a
tape, and maybe there are ancient systems out there in which userspace
must be explicit when reading and writing them.  (Normally, though, I
_think_ you just tell the kernel tape driver the right parameters
using, e.g. 'mt', then let it handle writing full blocks.)

Peter


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