Re: DD bs=4M option on USB mem-stick creates false format
Thomas Schmitt:
> Hi,
>
> kAt wrote:
>> All I can say is that I feel honored that some useful code was produced
>> with my problem statement as an inspiration.
>
> Whether it's useful will still have to turn out. :)
> Up to now it has one happy user.
I think being able to use a thumb-stick as a hard disk has some use.
While trying to understand this and experiment I am trying to find out
what firmware works with this medium and what it really does. I suspect
the chips are the same memory chips one finds in a ddr/dram with some
code that manages to store stuff in the chips and read/write them. The
issue of where disruption of current erases the one while it does not
affect the other I think it is more of an issue of what firmware erases
dram (or video memory) and not what retains data on a thumb stick. Most
of the references I found on the topic was about old window tricks of
using a USBstick as additional Ram.
> I am pondering about the partition table mess since quite a while.
> On the one hand it is what has been tested to halfways work since years.
> (Although recently an 8 year old isohybrid bug was discovered which
> prevents very old BIOSes from booting off the stick. So the testing
> cannot have been all that intense and dilligent.)
> On the other hand it just violates specs and software expectations.
I understand that xorriso was meant for writing cd/dvd mediums and some
additional code made it able to write the same images on USB drives.
If a decompressed image of a system takes up 3Gb and you are using an
8Gb disk why is it not consistent that you can partition and format the
rest of it? Why would live image makers vary so much in the way they do
this?
I think the vast majority of users are not really interested in the
details but functionality, so anything that promotes this consistent
functionality would be widely on demand.
It seems as tails is a project on the right direction. A reliable
system that boots up anywhere and allows you to easily encrypt and
decrypt data all contained in a thumb stick. Within this encrypted disk
space which seems essential for tails to be of any use, vmachines can
exist with real system functionality which tails lacks. Now imagine
what you can do with the whole hard disk being encrypted with a
tails-stick being the key to open it up.
> It's a mine field........
> Have a nice day :)
>
> Thomas
U2
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