[Bug-ddrescue] Fwd: GNU ddrescue data recovery tool - more suggestions

[wilsonstreet]

Hello Antonio,

I have made some slight adjustments to the earlier email,
to hopefully make it a bit clearer.

You will notice that the first group of suggestions (1) to
(5) have been done in the script example that I sent you.
So running that script will clarify the concepts ther.

Yours
Al
 
----- Message Forwarded on Sat 20/10/2012 -----
From: wilsonstreet <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: GNU ddrescue data recovery tool - more suggestions
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:34:51 +1300
ref;
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

Hello,

In a previous email, I suggested grouping the options in
terms of related tasks.

I have gone through the options and grouped them in an
example set of groups.
Please forgive any incorrectly named options.

1) Source Options (these commands can be denoted as being
part of group S)
-- block size
-- max-size
-- direct  (how to "correctly set" "sector size" of the
source partition/disk ??? - we can set "clusters",
"block-size", but there is no option to set the "sector
size")

2a) Data Extraction Options (group DE)
-- try-again
-- max-errors
-- maxerror-rate
-- skip size
-- no-split
-- max retries
-- reverse (note any options that this does not work with, &
ones it does)
-- timeout

2b) Rescue Domain Options (group RD)
-- complete only
-- domain-logfile
-- retrim

3) Output file Options (group O)
-- synchronous
-- force
-- fill=types
-- preallocate
-- sparse
-- truncate

4) Reporting Options (REP)
-- help
-- version
-- quiet
-- verbose
-- binary perfixes
-- generate-logfile (this is currently ambiguous - is it
generate-"logfilename" or "generate-logfile" command?)

5) Other commands
-- cluster             could be in (S) or (DE)
-- input-position      could be in (S)
-- verify-input-size   could be in (S)
-- output-position      could be in (O)

=============================
Bug Report

Ctrl+C exit action Bug

I also noticed that when Ctrl+C is used to interrupt an
operation, the text is printed on screen directly over the
user prompt, which may confuse the user - or worse - panic
the user. It might be clearer to the user if the Ctrl+C
characters appeared elsewhere - say on a line within the
text of the running operation (above the user prompt for the
next command. This line could have a message that says
Ctrl+C (user exit) has not been pressed - if you press
Ctrl+C, the program may delay a little time while it cleans
up , before it confirms that you have pressed Ctrl+C.

=============================
Use of other utilities

a) Possibly include information about system
commands (such as "mount" to find the devices and their
references, maybe also block size, etc. SMART reports to
detect worst partitions first) to get information which is

b) useful for constructing the command text.
Possibly be able to execute them directly from ddrescue.

c) Either include information on these useful commands in
the
help file, and/or have some way of calling them up
automatically in a script, to help construct the command
text for ddrescue.

=============================

Yours
Al