[Toybox] dd man page

[Alain Toussaint]

> Define "some artifact"? It looks like it's basically blkid traversing
> the table and overwriting  any matches it finds with zeroes?

Basically, I would wipe a disk partitions using wipefs --all /dev/sda
and load up cfdisk to write new partition but it would find already
existing partitions (boot or swap, or whatever) if I'd replicate some
partitions structure. Example:

old /dev/sda (1TB disk, dos partitioning)

/boot 512MB
swap-v1 4096MB
/ 48GB
/home 96GB
/srv $REST_OF_DISK_SPACE (typically 750-800GB, database space mostly
but web server and other odds and ends).

new /dev/sda (after cfdisk):

/boot 512MB (found by cfdisk despite partition signature not there anymore).
swap-v1 4096MB (ditto).
/ 48GB (ditto).
/home 192GB (ditto because of the starting point of the partition)
/var 96GB (no signature found by cfdisk, mail server space).
/srv $REST_OF_DISK_SPACE (no signature found).

> And yeah, I always used dd for that. Didn't know there was a command.
> and I don't see how making it not there but recoverable is useful? (You
> can backup the contents of a block device with "cat" if you really need
> to...)
>
> Rob

My use case for dd is not for backup purpose (I'm not that inclined to
save a bunch of infected windows boxes and their ilks) but for cleanup
purpose.

Al