Multi-Copy Device 0.1.2

Multi-Copy Device or mdcp is a command-line utility for *nix that provide to copy from a disk device to many. The data transfer rate is improved by making use of a much more efficient use of the disks transfer rate.

The origin data is read only once, and is replicated in the destination devices. All working in parallel: all disks working at the same time, almost without interruption.

Thus, the time to copy between devices falls considerably in relation to others existing utilities used to same propose - such as "dd".

This system was developed aiming to reduce the time of the cloning of discs with pre-installed operating systems for multiple machines, but can be used for a big variety of porpoises.

USAGE

The sintax of comand-line utility is of form:

mdcp < bs > < count > < fileIn > < fileOut1 > ... < fileOutN >
< bs > : Block size. Leave it 0 to default size 32768
< count > : Copy only < count > blocks. Leave it 0 for copy until find EOF
< fileIn > : Device to be read
< fileOutN > : Device to be written

Examples:

To copy from file "linux-hd1.img" to the devices hdb, hdc, and hdd:

# mdcp 0 0 linux-hd1.img hdb hdc hdd

To copy from device hda to hdb and hdc, first 1GB of data:

# mdcp 32768 32768 /dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc

note that 32768 * 32768 = 1073741824 = 1GB

To zero-fill the firsts 10GB from devices hdb, hdc and hdd you can do:

# mdcp 0 327680 /dev/zero /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

Note that the name of the devices will can be change acordling to wich OS you are.

At FreeBSD OS, a copy would like as:

# mdcp 0 0 myimg.img /dev/ad1 /dev/ad2 /dev/ad3

What's New in This Release:

· Included a man page.
· Improved the copy for many devices: Now, when a disk fails (ex. when is full) it is removed from work, and the system still coping to others destinations.
· Improved style of statistics at and of copies.

· Fixed a problem when compiling on sistems that no need for librt.
· Fixed segmentation fail when try to refer to inacessible/inexistent files.
· Fixed a integer overflow on showing readed/written bytes.
· Fixed a problem when verifing inconsistent arguments.
· The script configure was changed for reasons of compatibility among *nix systems.



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