[finnix] Replace ddrescue with gddrescue?

Michael D. Setzer II mikes at kuentos.guam.net
Wed Apr 14 17:00:08 PDT 2010


On 14 Apr 2010 at 22:48, Sylvan Heuser wrote:

From:           	Sylvan Heuser <sylvan.heuser at gmx.net>
To:             	General Finnix discussion and announcements 
<finnix at lists.finnix.org>
Date sent:      	Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:48:29 +0200
Subject:        	Re: [finnix] Replace ddrescue with gddrescue?
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> On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 08:24 +0200, tk wrote:
> > Hey Sylvan, yes finnix is a great distro. Especially as it's a one
> > man-show behind it. The mailing list is painful however. My advice? :
> > Be persistent, someone will answer.
> I'll try :)
> 

Does someone has a clear difference between ddrescue and gddrescue?
Earlier when this thread appeared about dd_rescue versus ddrescue.  I 
looked into it, and I have added it to the latest alphas of my g4l (disk 
imaging). Note the ddrescue wasn't that big, but it require the libstdc++ 
library, which wasn't part of my image. Perhaps finnix already has that 
library. My g4l only has a 6M kernel file and 9M filesystem image, but it is 
only text based. The ISO does have multiple kernel options, so is about 90M.

I replaced the older dd_resuce with the ddrescue, and am looking at allowing 
using more than the basice ddrescue source destination options.

Originally, I was thinking thinking that ddrescue and gddrescue were the 
same thing, since the seemed to be some confusing between the dd_rescue 
and ddrescue. With the ddrescue being gnu ddrescue. 

Does the gddrescue have additional option that would be helpful in disk / 
partition backups?

As a final thing, can the complied gddrescue be ftped to a running finnix 
boot, and then run? In the past I had a method to download an run g4l from 
a finnix cd.


> > On to business, is gdd the samesize or smaller?
> Actually, gddrescue is 68kibibyte bigger... but Finnix has a goal of
> 185MiB at max, which it is still far from reaching, from what I read.
> 
> name      Architecture Installed Size
> ddrescue  i386          80 kB
>           powerpc       88 kB
> gddrescue i386         148 kB
>           powerpc      160 kB
> Taken from Debian Squeeze
> 
> I don't think this will be a problem.
> 
> > when you say "more advanced" what do you mean?
> 
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/hack-and-when-disaster-strikes-hard-drive-crashes?page=0,1 
> > ddrescue or dd_rescue 
> > To make things a little confusing, there are two similar tools with
> > almost identical names. dd_rescue (with an underscore) is an older
> > rescue tool that still does the job, but it works in a fairly basic
> > manner. It starts at the beginning of the drive, and when it
> > encounters errors, it retries a number of times and then moves to the
> > next block. Eventually (usually after a few days), it reaches the end
> > of the drive. Often bad blocks are clustered together, and in the case
> > when all of the bad blocks are near the beginning of the drive, you
> > could waste a lot of time trying to read them instead of recovering
> > all of the good blocks.
> > 
> > The ddrescue tool (no underscore) is part of the GNU Project and takes
> > the basic algorithm of dd_rescue further. ddrescue tries to recover
> > all of the good data from the device first and then divides and
> > conquers the remaining bad blocks until it has tried to recover the
> > entire drive. Another added feature of ddrescue is that it optionally
> > can maintain a log file of what it already has recovered, so you can
> > stop the program and then resume later right where you left off. This
> > is useful when you believe ddrescue has recovered the bulk of the good
> > data. You can stop the program and make a copy of the mostly complete
> > image, so you can attempt to repair it, and then start ddrescue again
> > to complete the image.
> 
> Especially the logfile feature is sometimes crucial, for example when
> you need to copy an image in two parts because of limited space on your
> transfer medium.
> 
> > what about the mem overhead?
> mh... unfortunately that's as well... disappointing.
> 
> Copying a 1GB file around on my local hd:
> PID   USER   PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND 
> 32653 user   25   5  2964  936  760 D    1  0.0   0:00.06 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 32653 user   25   5  2964  936  760 D   13  0.0   0:00.70 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 32653 user   25   5  2964  936  760 R    8  0.0   0:01.10 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964  996  820 R    6  0.0   0:00.28 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964  996  820 D   13  0.0   0:00.92 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964  996  820 D    5  0.0   0:01.16 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964  996  820 D    6  0.0   0:01.48 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964  996  820 D    4  0.0   0:01.66 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964  996  820 D    4  0.0   0:01.86 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    2  0.0   0:01.94 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    1  0.0   0:02.00 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    5  0.0   0:02.24 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D   10  0.0   0:02.72 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    7  0.0   0:03.06 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    9  0.0   0:03.52 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    7  0.0   0:03.86 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R   10  0.0   0:04.38 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D   10  0.0   0:04.86 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    8  0.0   0:05.24 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    8  0.0   0:05.62 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    8  0.0   0:06.04 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    5  0.0   0:06.28 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R   11  0.0   0:06.82 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D   10  0.0   0:07.30 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    9  0.0   0:07.76 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    7  0.0   0:08.12 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 R    7  0.0   0:08.48 ddrescue                                                                                                                                                                 
> 20187 user   25   5  2964 1000  824 D    9  0.0   0:08.92 ddrescue
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  564  432 R    6  0.0   0:00.28 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D    1  0.0   0:00.32 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D    4  0.0   0:00.54 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 R    4  0.0   0:00.74 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 R    7  0.0   0:01.10 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D    7  0.0   0:01.46 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D   12  0.0   0:02.08 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D   11  0.0   0:02.64 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D    9  0.0   0:03.08 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  568  436 D    4  0.0   0:03.30 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    7  0.0   0:03.64 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    5  0.0   0:03.90 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    9  0.0   0:04.36 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    5  0.0   0:04.60 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 R    7  0.0   0:04.94 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 R    9  0.0   0:05.40 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D   10  0.0   0:05.90 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 R   10  0.0   0:06.42 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    9  0.0   0:06.86 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    8  0.0   0:07.26 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D   12  0.0   0:07.86 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    8  0.0   0:08.28 dd_rescue                                                                                                                                                                
> 21410 user   25   5  1840  600  468 D    9  0.0   0:08.74 dd_rescue
> 
> > fairly sure that apps have tight specifications that they have to fit,
> > like size, and mem requirements before they can be included.
> If I got it right, ddrescue was suggested in the forum and included
> without any further discussion. If there are such tight specifications,
> I'd like to read about them in the wiki...
> 
> > replacing one for the other? slippery slope
> Wouldn't you replace your old knife for a sharper one (that can cut
> through were you needed a saw before), even if it is slightly bigger?
> 
> -- 
> S.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> finnix mailing list
> finnix at lists.finnix.org
> http://lists.colobox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/finnix


+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
  mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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