Caligula Burning Tool
Caligula is a user-friendly, lightweight TUI for imaging disks.
$ caligula burn -h
Burn an image to a disk
Usage: caligula burn [OPTIONS] <INPUT>
Arguments:
<INPUT> Input file to burn
Options:
-o <OUT>
Where to write the output. If not supplied, we will search for
possible disks and ask you for where you want to burn
-z, --compression <COMPRESSION>
What compression format the input file is. If `auto`, then we will
guess based on the extension [default: auto] [possible values:
auto, none, bz2, gz, xz]
-s, --hash <HASH>
The hash of the input file. For more information, see long help
(--help) [default: ask]
--hash-of <HASH_OF>
Is the hash calculated from the raw file, or the compressed file? [possible
values: raw, compressed]
--show-all-disks
If provided, we will show all disks, removable or not
-f, --force
If supplied, we will not ask for confirmation before destroying
your disk
-h, --help
Print help (see more with '--help')
-V, --version
Print version
How to install
- Arch Linux: download it from the AUR
- Nix Package Manager: If your system is flake-enabled,
nix run github:ifd3f/caligula - MacOS and other Linux distros: download the latest release
Platform support
- Automated builds and tests run for amd64 Linux and MacOS.
- Automated builds (but NOT automated tests) run for arm64 Linux
- No automated builds or tests for arm64 MacOS, but we usually distribute a pre-compiled binary in releases.
We plan on supporting Windows and FreeBSD eventually. If you would like support for other OSes and architectures, please file an issue!
Features
- Small, statically-linked binary on the Linux version
- Cool graphs
- Listing attached disks, and telling you their size and hardware model information
- Rich confirmation dialogs so you don't accidentally nuke your filesystem
- Automatically decompressing your input file for a variety of formats, including gz, bz2, and xz
- Validating your input file against a hash before burning, with support for md5, sha1, sha256, and more!
- Running sudo for you if you forgot to run sudo earlier (it happens)
- Verifying your disk to make sure it was written correctly
- Did I mention cool graphs?
FAQ
Why did you make this?
Because I wanted a nice, user-friendly wrapper around dd that wasn't like, a 90 MB executable that packages Chromium and eats hundreds of MB of RAM like certain other disk etching softwares do.
Why is it called "Caligula"?
Because there used to be a tool called Nero Burning ROM, so I chose another crazy Roman emperor to name this software after. It's a very uncreative name and I might rename it later.
Why is dd not good enough for you?
I know how dd works. In fact, instead of using caligula, I could just do this:
$ sha256sum some-image-file.iso.gz
I pause here to confirm that the file has the right SHA.
$ gunzip some-image-file.iso.gz
$ lsblk
I pause here to make sure my disk is indeed detected by the OS.
$ dd bs=4M if=some-image-file.iso of=/dev/
I pause here to confirm that I am indeed typing in the correct disk.
$ dd bs=4M if=some-image-file.iso of=/dev/sdb
dd: failed to open '/dev/sdb': Permission denied
$ sudo dd bs=4M if=some-image-file.iso of=/dev/sdb
There is no output, but I'd like to see the progress.
^C^C^C
$ sudo dd bs=4M if=some-image-file.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress
Or, instead of that whole song and dance, I could just type
$ caligula burn some-image-file.iso.gz
and have it fill in the blanks. It's not that I don't know how to use dd, it's just that after flashing so many SD cards and USBs, I'd rather do something less error-prone.
Why Rust?
Because it's
Why Nix?
It makes the CI more predictable.
Why so many other dependencies?
To be fair, Rust doesn't have a very comprehensive standard library, and I only use one or two functions in most of those dependencies. Thanks to dead code elimination, inlining, and other optimizations, they don't end up contributing much to the overall binary size.
Will the binary ever get bigger?
I want to keep the binary very small. I want to keep the x86_64-linux version under 4MB, with 8MB as an absolute maximum. As of v0.3.0, it's only 2.66MB, which is pretty good!
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