Re: [Bug-ddrescue] complete failure could use more output

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

address@hidden wrote:
> # ddrescue -n -c 10000 /dev/sdb /dev/sda
>
> Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
> rescued:         0 B,  errsize:       0 B,  current rate:        0 B/s
>    ipos:         0 B,   errors:       0,    average rate:        0 B/s
>    opos:         0 B
>
>
> This kind of additional output would be nice:
>
> # fdisk /dev/sdb
>
> Unable to read /dev/sdb

It seems ddrescue was able to open /dev/sdb and then the read command 
returned 0 bytes. How can ddrescue tell this from an empty input file? 
Note that ddrescue tells the user when it was unable to open the input file.

I mean fdisk expects to read a partition table of a given size, but for 
ddrescue an empty input file is as valid as any other.