[Gloucs] USB flash drive testing tools

[Graham Nye]

Glyn Davies wrote:
> 
> I'm aware of /dev/random and /dev/urandom... 

I looked at those before using /dev/zero.
/dev/urandom is much slower than /dev/zero. (That might be
an advantage if you want to see if your device writing
problems are speed related.)

/dev/random is set up to produce small amounts of relatively
high quality randomness. It will just block if you try
copying it to a USB drive.

(So what does high quality randomness mean? See:
http://www.eworldui.net/blog/post/2004/10/25/Dilbert-on-Random-Number-Generation.aspx )

> ...but why isn't there a /dev/one?

A common request on Google. For those with kernel hacking skills
there's a patch at
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/is-there-a-dev-one-like-dev-zero-619626/

A more general solution would be a /dev/word you could program with an ioctl
to generate an arbitrary bit stream. Anyone fancy a challenge?


-- 
Graham Nye
glug at thenyes.org.uk