GNOME MultiWriter: Easy Duplication Of Many USB Devices

[Kano]

@RahulSundaram

for x in /dev/sX[b-z]; do (echo dd if=/path/to/iso of=$x conv=sync bs=1M &);done

But a gui is always nice to have, maybe I try it sometime. Btw. using usb 3.0 conv=sync does not seem to work, did you notice that on your system as well?

[Pseus]

dd is not enough in some cases. I once had to replicate many ext4 images on slightly different USB devices (almost +/-50MiB of variance). Having a little tool or script that resizes the image accordingly would have been really useful (not sure if this new tool does that).

[Kano]

Well, it is not really an image then if you want to use different sizes. You can script sfdisk to partition the stick, create the filesystem and rsync/cp -a it, but if you want to use an image it has to fit on the smallest one.

$SFDISK -f -L -uS $TARGET <<EOT
2048,,83
EOT

Would partition it to max size with 1 MB alignment. The rest should be straight forward.

[Sonadow]

cp /dev/sdc /dev/sdd

Job's a good'un.

To the best of my knowledge cp does not copy over the much needed EOFs and EOLs needed for binary images to function correctly.

[caligula]

I'm probably also missing something but if someone is so clueless that doesn't know how to do this with bash / gnu parallel & dd, maybe he shouldn't be doing it in the first place? Why would such a noob flash multiple usb sticks? If you want to install Linux on multiple machines, use PXE boot, seriously.

[caligula]

To the best of my knowledge cp does not copy over the much needed EOFs and EOLs needed for binary images to function correctly.

If you're ever flashed Linux images, dd is the utility. The only thing it's lacking is a progress indicator.

[You-]

I'm probably also missing something but if someone is so clueless that doesn't know how to do this with bash / gnu parallel & dd, maybe he shouldn't be doing it in the first place? Why would such a noob flash multiple usb sticks? If you want to install Linux on multiple machines, use PXE boot, seriously.

You are assuming a single purpose for the prepared USB sticks

I can imagine some potential layperson preparing materials for a course. This could be a nice convenience tool.

[drspinderwalf]

A really handy tool! A few years ago I was looking for a simple utitility to use without having to delve too much into black magick. This will be very helpful for a few people I know of that need to prepare thumb drives on a mass scale once a year.

[caligula]

You are assuming a single purpose for the prepared USB sticks

I can imagine some potential layperson preparing materials for a course. This could be a nice convenience tool.

Ok I can see it now. For something like conference usb keys when the parallel performance isn't that important but you can set up a 20 port hub to do the job.

[Chewi]

A simple cp doesn't do what this program does. When we are in trade-shows and we have to write dozens of USB disks, running cp isn't efficient since it is not multi-threaded.

I was being a little facetious. I realised afterwards that tee would probably work but admittedly not quite as straightforward.

To the best of my knowledge cp does not copy over the much needed EOFs and EOLs needed for binary images to function correctly.

I see that this is mentioned on Wikipedia but I've used cp for years with no ill effects. I frankly find this surprising. Perhaps they meant cat? The problem with dd is that it doesn't work out the optimal block size for you so it can be much slower.