[TriLUG] HD Block Size (newbieish question)

Tanner Lovelace lovelace at wayfarer.org
Mon Jul 28 16:27:59 EDT 2003


On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 13:54, Joseph Tate wrote:
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> There is a tool called BCwipe, which does a better job.  urandom will 
> take a heck of a long time if there is not enough entropy on the 
> system.  Google for bcwipe to find it.  (I've got an iso that has tom's 
> root boot plus bcwipe on it if you're interested).
> 
> Joseph

Actually, by using /dev/urandom, it won't wait for new random data.
You're probably thinking of /dev/random which will wait until
it gets new random data.  /dev/urandom uses the random data that
is available as a seed to initialize a random number generator.
/dev/random gets *all* of it's random data from random events
like keypresses, mouse clicks/moves, or network packet arrival.

Still, BCwipe probably has a better interface, but if you'd still
like to use dd, don't worry about blocksize.  dd will figure
everything out for you fill the entire disk.

Cheers,
Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace(at)wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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