ddi

A safer dd

Introduction

If you ever used dd, the GNU coreutil that lets you copy data from one file to another, then you may have encountered a typical use case: burning an iso file to a USB flashdrive.

This is how a typical dd command intended for this purpose would look like:

$ dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdc

This command would copy all contents of image.iso into /dev/sdc which we'll assume it's a USB flashdrive in this example. However, it's VERY easy to mess up this command and send the output to a different device:

$ dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sda

Now all your data is gone and you're in tears. Thankfully, this tool exists, although it won't save you from past mistakes.

ddi (or dd-interactive) is a wrapper for dd. It takes all the same arguments, and all it really does is call dd in the background. But, if a device file is detected, you'll get a warning message detailing some information about what you're about to do as seen here:

Any kind of response other than "y" will abort the command. If you use dd frequently, you might appreciate not having to worry so much about nuking your entire installation by one typo.

If the command doesn't have the of flag, or the of flag doesn't direct to a block device, then the warning message is ommited and dd will be called without interrumption. This means that ddi can be used as a drop-in replacement for dd with the added benefit of warning you if you're about to commit a potentially destructive action.

Installation

ddi can be installed form the AUR.

$ paru -S ddi-bin

Optionally, there's pre-compiled binaries for download on the release section.