Quote Originally Posted by maul
hey,
thanks, but iam new to this. what does dd if do? and why do i need to do it. i'd appreciate it if u could gimme some more info on the procedure.

thanks
maulin
That one confused me too at first - the main thing to get over is that "if" is not the English word "if" and "of" is not the English preposition "of".

IOW, this is NOT a conditional argument, as I originally expected. This was where having "a little bit" of computer experience caused me problems, because I expected this to be like an if-then-else programming instruction. "if" stands for "input file" and "of" stands for "output file". I think that "dd" is an archaic acronym for "disk dump", or something like that. Basically you're copying a file form one place to another and possibly changing the name. Don't let it bug you.

Here's a great resource for BASH commands (BASH - Bourne again shell- is the name of the typical linux command set): http://www.onlamp.com/linux/cmd/ It's posted on a sticky at the top of the general support forum. Also, if you're in a console and get confused, you can get help by typing "man" followed by a space and a command name. "Man" stands for manual. So, for example, you might type "man dd" in the command console to find out the syntax and possible arguments for the "dd" command.

jd