On 05/15/2012 02:18 PM, Thomas Schmitt wrote: > I am a bit scared by the catastrophic potential of > cat debian.iso > /dev/sdX > for X = valuable hard disk.
I've wondered about that, too, when working on the relevant section of the Debian Live Manual. > Maybe one should advise people to first read a few MB from the stick > and watch it blinking, before one uses that address for writing > > dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/null bs=1M count=100 Interesting approach. As for me, I just never write to a USB key as root unless I'm absolutely sure I need to. (Yes, I could still trash the wrong USB attached storage, but that's likely less catastrophic than what I could accomplish as the superuser.) What I wonder, though, is if it is universally true that ordinary users will always have write access to a USB key they've just inserted. Under what circumstances will they not? Keep in mind, the user may very well be writing the USB from some non-Debian system. Ben -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4fb2964b.6010...@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
