DD(1M)DD(1M)NAMEdd - convert and copy a file
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/dd [operand=value]...
DESCRIPTION
The dd utility copies the specified input file to the specified output
with possible conversions. The standard input and output are used by
default. The input and output block sizes may be specified to take
advantage of raw physical I/O. Sizes are specified in bytes; a number
may end with k, b, or w to specify multiplication by 1024, 512, or 2,
respectively. Numbers may also be separated by x to indicate multipli‐
cation.
The dd utility reads the input one block at a time, using the specified
input block size. dd then processes the block of data actually
returned, which could be smaller than the requested block size. dd
applies any conversions that have been specified and writes the result‐
ing data to the output in blocks of the specified output block size.
cbs is used only if ascii, asciib, unblock, ebcdic, ebcdicb, ibm, ibmb,
or block conversion is specified. In the first two cases, cbs charac‐
ters are copied into the conversion buffer, any specified character
mapping is done, trailing blanks are trimmed, and a NEWLINE is added
before sending the line to output. In the last three cases, characters
up to NEWLINE are read into the conversion buffer and blanks are added
to make up an output record of size cbs. ASCII files are presumed to
contain NEWLINE characters. If cbs is unspecified or 0, the ascii,
asciib, ebcdic, ebcdicb, ibm, and ibmb options convert the character
set without changing the input file's block structure. The unblock and
block options become a simple file copy.
After completion, dd reports the number of whole and partial input and
output blocks.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
if=file
Specifies the input path. Standard input is the default.
of=file
Specifies the output path. Standard output is the default. If the
seek=expr conversion is not also specified, the output file will be
truncated before the copy begins, unless conv=notrunc is specified.
If seek=expr is specified, but conv=notrunc is not, the effect of
the copy will be to preserve the blocks in the output file over
which dd seeks, but no other portion of the output file will be
preserved. (If the size of the seek plus the size of the input file
is less than the previous size of the output file, the output file
is shortened by the copy.)
ibs=n
Specifies the input block size in n bytes (default is 512).
obs=n
Specifies the output block size in n bytes (default is 512).
bs=n
Sets both input and output block sizes to n bytes, superseding ibs=
and obs=. If no conversion other than sync, noerror, and notrunc is
specified, each input block is copied to the output as a single
block without aggregating short blocks.
cbs=n
Specifies the conversion block size for block and unblock in bytes
by n (default is 0). If cbs= is omitted or given a value of 0,
using block or unblock produces unspecified results.
This option is used only if ASCII or EBCDIC conversion is speci‐
fied. For the ascii and asciib operands, the input is handled as
described for the unblock operand except that characters are con‐
verted to ASCII before the trailing SPACE characters are deleted.
For the ebcdic, ebcdicb, ibm, and ibmb operands, the input is han‐
dled as described for the block operand except that the characters
are converted to EBCDIC or IBM EBCDIC after the trailing SPACE
characters are added.
files=n
Copies and concatenates n input files before terminating (makes
sense only where input is a magnetic tape or similar device).
skip=n
Skips n input blocks (using the specified input block size) before
starting to copy. On seekable files, the implementation reads the
blocks or seeks past them. On non-seekable files, the blocks are
read and the data is discarded.
iseek=n
Seeks n blocks from beginning of input file before copying (appro‐
priate for disk files, where skip can be incredibly slow).
oseek=n
Seeks n blocks from beginning of output file before copying.
seek=n
Skips n blocks (using the specified output block size) from begin‐
ning of output file before copying. On non-seekable files, existing
blocks are read and space from the current end-of-file to the spec‐
ified offset, if any, is filled with null bytes. On seekable files,
the implementation seeks to the specified offset or reads the
blocks as described for non-seekable files.
count=n
Copies only n input blocks.
conv=value[,value...]
Where values are comma-separated symbols from the following list:
ascii
Converts EBCDIC to ASCII.
asciib
Converts EBCDIC to ASCII using BSD-compatible character
translations.
ebcdic
Converts ASCII to EBCDIC. If converting fixed-length
ASCII records without NEWLINEs, sets up a pipeline with
dd conv=unblock beforehand.
ebcdicb
Converts ASCII to EBCDIC using BSD-compatible character
translations. If converting fixed-length ASCII records
without NEWLINEs, sets up a pipeline with dd
conv=unblock beforehand.
ibm
Slightly different map of ASCII to EBCDIC. If converting
fixed-length ASCII records without NEWLINEs, sets up a
pipeline with dd conv=unblock beforehand.
ibmb
Slightly different map of ASCII to EBCDIC using BSD-com‐
patible character translations. If converting fixed-
length ASCII records without NEWLINEs, sets up a pipe‐
line with dd conv=unblock beforehand.
The ascii (or asciib), ebcdic (or ebcdicb), and ibm (or ibmb) val‐
ues are mutually exclusive.
block
Treats the input as a sequence of NEWLINE-terminated or
EOF-terminated variable-length records independent of
the input block boundaries. Each record is converted to
a record with a fixed length specified by the conversion
block size. Any NEWLINE character is removed from the
input line. SPACE characters are appended to lines that
are shorter than their conversion block size to fill the
block. Lines that are longer than the conversion block
size are truncated to the largest number of characters
that will fit into that size. The number of truncated
lines is reported.
unblock
Converts fixed-length records to variable length. Reads
a number of bytes equal to the conversion block size (or
the number of bytes remaining in the input, if less than
the conversion block size), delete all trailing SPACE
characters, and append a NEWLINE character.
The block and unblock values are mutually exclusive.
lcase
Maps upper-case characters specified by the LC_CTYPE key‐
word tolower to the corresponding lower-case character.
Characters for which no mapping is specified are not modi‐
fied by this conversion.
ucase
Maps lower-case characters specified by the LC_CTYPE key‐
word toupper to the corresponding upper-case character.
Characters for which no mapping is specified are not modi‐
fied by this conversion.
The lcase and ucase symbols are mutually exclusive.
swab
Swaps every pair of input bytes. If the current input
record is an odd number of bytes, the last byte in the
input record is ignored.
noerror
Does not stop processing on an input error. When an
input error occurs, a diagnostic message is written on
standard error, followed by the current input and output
block counts in the same format as used at completion.
If the sync conversion is specified, the missing input
is replaced with null bytes and processed normally. Oth‐
erwise, the input block will be omitted from the output.
notrunc
Does not truncate the output file. Preserves blocks in
the output file not explicitly written by this invoca‐
tion of dd. (See also the preceding of=file operand.)
sync
Pads every input block to the size of the ibs= buffer,
appending null bytes. (If either block or unblock is
also specified, appends SPACE characters, rather than
null bytes.)
oflag=value[,value...]
Where values are comma-separated symbols from the following list which
affect the behavior of writing the output file:
dsync
The output file is opened with the O_DSYNC flag set. All
data writes will be synchronous. For more information on
O_DSYNC see fcntl.h(3HEAD).
sync
The output file is opened with the O_SYNC flag set. All data
and metadata writes will be synchronous. For more informa‐
tion on O_SYNC see fcntl.h(3HEAD).
If operands other than conv= and oflag= are specified more than once,
the last specified operand=value is used.
For the bs=, cbs=, ibs=, and obs= operands, the application must supply
an expression specifying a size in bytes. The expression, expr, can be:
1. a positive decimal number
2. a positive decimal number followed by k, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024
3. a positive decimal number followed by M, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024*1024
4. a positive decimal number followed by G, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024*1024*1024
5. a positive decimal number followed by T, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024*1024*1024*1024
6. a positive decimal number followed by P, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024*1024*1024*1024*1024
7. a positive decimal number followed by E, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024*1024*1024*1024*1024*1024
8. a positive decimal number followed by Z, specifying multi‐
plication by 1024*1024*1024*1024*1024*1024*1024
9. a positive decimal number followed by b, specifying multi‐
plication by 512
10. two or more positive decimal numbers (with or without k or
b) separated by x, specifying the product of the indicated
values.
All of the operands will be processed before any input is read.
SIGNALS
When dd receives either SIGINFO or SIGUSR1, dd will emit the current
input and output block counts, total bytes written, total time elapsed,
and the number of bytes per second to standard error. This is the same
information format that dd emits when it successfully completes. Users
may send SIGINFO via their terminal. The default character is ^T, see
stty(1) for more information.
For SIGINT, dd writes status information to standard error before exit‐
ing. dd takes the standard action for all other signals.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of dd when encoun‐
tering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1 Copying from one tape drive to another
The following example copies from tape drive 0 to tape drive 1, using a
common historical device naming convention.
example% dd if=/dev/rmt/0h of=/dev/rmt/1h
Example 2 Stripping the first 10 bytes from standard input
The following example strips the first 10 bytes from standard input:
example% dd ibs=10 skip=1
Example 3 Reading a tape into an ASCII file
This example reads an EBCDIC tape blocked ten 80-byte EBCDIC card
images per block into the ASCII file x:
example% dd if=/dev/tape of=x ibs=800 cbs=80 conv=ascii,lcase
Example 4 Using conv=sync to write to tape
The following example uses conv=sync when writing to a tape:
example% tar cvf - . | compress | dd obs=1024k of=/dev/rmt/0 conv=sync
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of dd: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES,
and NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0
The input file was copied successfully.
>0
An error occurred.
If an input error is detected and the noerror conversion has not been
specified, any partial output block will be written to the output file,
a diagnostic message will be written, and the copy operation will be
discontinued. If some other error is detected, a diagnostic message
will be written and the copy operation will be discontinued.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌────────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │ Standard │
└────────────────────┴─────────────────┘
SEE ALSOcp(1), sed(1), tr(1), fcntl.h(3HEAD), attributes(5), environ(5), large‐
file(5), standards(5)DIAGNOSTICS
f+p records in(out)
numbers of full and partial blocks read(written)NOTES
Do not use dd to copy files between file systems having different block
sizes.
Using a blocked device to copy a file will result in extra nulls being
added to the file to pad the final block to the block boundary.
When dd reads from a pipe, using the ibs=X and obs=Y operands, the
output will always be blocked in chunks of size Y. When bs=Z is used,
the output blocks will be whatever was available to be read from the
pipe at the time.
When using dd to copy files to a tape device, the file size must be a
multiple of the device sector size (for example, 512 Kbyte). To copy
files of arbitrary size to a tape device, use tar(1) or cpio(1).
Jan 04, 2014 DD(1M)
