Write partial data from MBR.bin to a sector in USB - windows

DD is a tool for linux which can Write partial data from MBR.bin to a sector in USB (instead of writing a whole sector). Now I need to do such thing in windows. There is a DD for windows, but it seems it will write a whole sector!
I need to write first 440 bytes of a mbr file to a usb stick. the code in linux is:
dd if=mbr.bin of=/dev/sd<X> bs=440 count=1
and in windows it will be:
dd bs=440 count=1 if=mbr.bin of=\\.\<x>:
where x is the volume letter. But in windows it will cause USB to be corrupted and usb need to be formatted. It seems it writes the whole data. How can I solve this problem?

Copy a complete block!
e.g. for a 512 byte blocksize (512-440=72)
copy mbr.bin mbr.full
dd bs=1 if=\\.\<x>: skip=440 seek=440 of=mbr.full count=72
dd bs=512 if=mbr.full of=\\.\<x>: count=1

Are you sure you pass the parameters correctly? Maybe the win version expects it to be /bs=440. Just a guess. Can't you anyway just truncate the file to 440 bytes?

Related

Trying to back up CentOS using the "dd" command

I'd like to back up a SSD which I'm using for CentOS. Trying to learn dd. My drive is a fairly simple GPT partition of 120GB.
I run "dd" to copy the image of sda to a USB stick sdd1:
[root#localhost ~]# dd if=/dev/sda conv=sync,noerror status=progress bs=64k of=/dev/sdd1
120029118464 bytes (120 GB, 112 GiB) copied, 30810 s, 3.9 MB/s
1831575+1 records in
1831576+0 records out
120034164736 bytes (120 GB, 112 GiB) copied, 30810.8 s, 3.9 MB/s
But then when I examine the USB stick, there is nothing to be seen on it and I see no way to mount it
this is what appears under the Disks command
Question is:
How do I access the image?
(As a side note, I read a claim that the dd command is like the IBM JCL statement of the same name. I was a mainframe programmer. The IBM DD command is often still called a "DD Card". It doesn't copy files. It just joins your file declaration in your program to some external file. To copy a file the old skool way is to use IEBGENER)
if=/dev/sda Is cloning the entire disk and of=/dev/sdd1 Is writing to a partition. Which doesn't make much sense.
You may want to clone the entire disk onto another disk
dd if=/dev/sda conv=sync,noerror status=progress bs=64k of=/dev/sdd
Or better yet clone to an compressed image
dd if=/dev/sda | gzip > /sda.img.gz
And restore like so
gzip -d /sda.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sda

Is it possible to log the output of a uboot command into a file from u-boot prompt?

I am working with an embedded board which supports u-boot.
I am trying to write and read the emmc device connected to the board,
After read, i need to have a look at the contents and compare it with the data that I have written to it.
Is there a way I can log the output of the a u-boot command, when I read a block from eMMC and store it in an address and try to view the contents of
it using:
mmc read 0x10700000 133120 1
mm.l 0x10700000
into a file and then can store the file in an emmc partition or a tftp server ?
Thank you for your time,
Nishad
The save command can be used to write memory to a file.
save file to a filesystem
save <interface> <dev[:part]> <addr> <filename> bytes [pos]
- Save binary file 'filename' to partition 'part' on device
type 'interface' instance 'dev' from addr 'addr' in memory.
'bytes' gives the size to save in bytes and is mandatory.
'pos' gives the file byte position to start writing to.
If 'pos' is 0 or omitted, the file is written from the start.
Of cause this requires the file system to be writable. For FAT this implies building with CONFIG_FAT_WRITE=y.

Allocating a larger u-boot image

I am compiling my own kernel and bootloader (U-boot). I added a bunch of new environmental variables, but U-boot doesn't load anymore (it just doesn't load anything from the memory). I am using pocketbeagle and booting from an SD card. Thus I am editing the file "am335x_evm.h" found in /include/configs/.
I am trying to allocate U-boot in a way that it has more space for the environmental variables and that it can load succesfully from the memory, but I have been unable to do so. As far as I understand, by default it allocates 128kb of memory to U-boot env variables. Since I added a bunch of them, I am trying to increase its size from 128kb to 512kb.
I have changed the following line (from 128kb to 512kb):
#define CONFIG_ENV_SIZE (512 << 10)
(By the way, anyone knows why it is shifted to the left 10 bits?)
I have also changed CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET and CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET_REDUND to:
#define CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET (1152 << 10) /* Originally 768 KiB in */
#define CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET_REDUND (1664 << 10) /* Originally 896 KiB in */
Then after compiling the new U-boot, I format the SD card and insert the new kernel and U-boot.
I start by erasing partitions:
export DISK=/dev/mmcblk0
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=${DISK} bs=1M count=10
Then I transfer U-boot by doing:
sudo dd if=./u-boot/MLO of=${DISK} count=1 seek=1 bs=512k
sudo dd if=./u-boot/u-boot.img of=${DISK} count=2 seek=1 bs=576k
I then create the partition layout by doing:
sudo sfdisk ${DISK} <<-__EOF__
4M,,L,*
__EOF__
Then I add the kernel, binary trees, kernel modules, etc... When trying to boot and reading the serial port, I get nothing at all. U-boot is not able to load anything from the SD card. What am I doing wrong? I'd appreciate if you could point me what my problem is and exactly what I should be doing to increase the size and allocate everything correctly.

Hex Dump Specific Parts of File - Bash

I'm trying to write a bash script to audit hard drives that have been wiped to ensure the wiping system is working properly. I would like to find a way to hex dump specific parts of a drive without having to hex dump the entire drive and extract the parts I'd like (as this seems to run for too long to make the script worth writing). Ideally, I'd be able to grab parts from the beginning, middle, and end of the drive.
I would like to take the output of the hex dump and check it for the existence of only one character (indicating the drive has been successfully wiped). This part, I can handle, but I thought it may affect any advice I may get.
I've used head piped into xxd to get the beginning of the file which has worked, but I'm still stuck on the other parts. I've tried using tail to just get the end of the drive, but that doesn't seem to work quickly either. Is it possible to do this efficiently? Possibly using dd or something else and pipe it into a hex editor? I've looked through options for xxd as well as hexdump to no avail. If someone could point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated!
xxd has options to skip a ways into the file (-s) and dump a limited length (-l). If you use its plain hex (-p) option, you may be able to use grep to find any anomalies:
$ xxd -s 8192 -l 256 -p /dev/disk3s2 | grep [^0]
000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000300000000000000800000000000000000000
dbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdb
dbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdb
dbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdb
od has similar skip (-j) and limit length (-N). Similarly, dd has skip= and count= (although these are counted in blocks, not bytes; you can change the block size with bs=).
EDIT: Since xxd -p is giving weird results (not stopping at what should be the end of the device), I'd recommend running some tests to figure out what's going on. First, back up anything important on the computer, because if something is weird at the device access level, it's possible that some of these tests might overwrite something unexpected, possibly even on another disk.
Next, try dumping to the end of the device with different tools, and see if they all behave the same way:
xxd -s 65451982336 /dev/sdb | more # This *should* dump 512 bytes (32 lines) then stop, but apparently keeps going
od -xv -j 65451982336 /dev/sdb | more # This also *should* dump 512 bytes then stop
dd if=/dev/sdb skip=127835903 | xxd | more # This again should do the same thing (note that the skip value is in 512-byte blocks)
Do the other tools read past what fdisk reports as the end of the disk? If all three read more data, I'm going with the "fdisk is wrong/misleading" answer. You can test further by writing some nonzero data past the "end" and seeing what the results are:
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb seek=127835903 count=2
...then repeat the various dump commands. If they show two blocks (=64 lines) of random data followed by zeroes, I'm pretty sure the device is bigger than you think it is.
I am not near my shell, but something along these lines should get you started:
dd if=/dev/hda1 | hexdump -C | grep [^00]
will print all non-zero bytes.
dd if=/dev/hda1 | od -x -j100
will give you a hexadecimal dump with offsets, starting 100 bytes in.

mkfs.ext2 in cygwin not working

I'm attempting to create a fs within a file.
under linux it's very simple:
create a blank file size 8 gb
dd of=fsFile bs=1 count=0 seek=8G
"format" the drive:
mkfs.ext2 fsFile
works great.
however under cygwin running from /usr/sbin ./mkfs.ext2
has all kinds of weird errors (i assume because of some abstraction)
But with cygwin i get:
mkfs.ext2: Device size reported to be zero. Invalid partition specified, or
partition table wasn't reread after running fdisk, due to
a modified partition being busy and in use. You may need to reboot
to re-read your partition table.
or even worse (if i try to access a file through /cygdrive/...
mkfs.ext2: Bad file descriptor while trying to determine filesystem size
:(
please help,
Thanks
Well it seems that the way to solve it is to not use any path on the file you wish to modify.
doing that seems to have solved it.
also it seems that my 8 gig file does have a file size that's simply to big, it seems like it resets the size var i.e.
$ /usr/sbin/fsck.ext2 -f testFile8GiG
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
The filesystem size (according to the superblock) is 2097152 blocks
The physical size of the device is 0 blocks
Either the superblock or the partition table is likely to be corrupt!
Abort? no
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
testFile8GiG: 122/524288 files (61.5% non-contiguous), 253313/2097152 blocks
Thanks anyway

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