cli guru needed

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 2 Aug 2009, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

> On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 12:54 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> > Bazooka Joe wrote:
> > > Is there a way to combine these 2 commands to cut my time in half?
> > >
> > > VBoxManage internalcommands  converttoraw file.vdi file.raw
> > > then I have to run
> > > dd if=file.raw of=/dev/sdb
> > >
> > > -thx
> > >
> > You can can command on the same command in several ways. It depends
> > on what you put between the command.
> >
> > ; - always run the next command.
> > && - run the second command only if the first command is successful.
> > || - run the second command if the first one fails.
>
> How is this going to reduce his total time? The commands are still
> running sequentially.

  i'd bump up the blocksize of that dd command.  IIRC, the default
blocksize for dd is 512 bytes -- painfully small and resulting in lots
and lots of little writes.  crank up the blocksize significantly and
that second command should speed up noticeably.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

        Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
"Kernel Newbie Corner" column @ linux.com:          http://cli.gs/WG6WYX
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