I'd like to use the option oflag=append
for a dd
operation to append content to a file. This is to increase the size of the underlying file for a loop device in a case where creating a new larger file is too resource intensive.
It's possible dd
is not the best option for this anyway but is the best I am aware of. Better suggestions welcome!
My CentOS 4.8 X86_64 server is running coreutils 5.2.1. The version of dd
supplied with this version of coreutils doesn't support the oflag
option. No newer version appears present in the official repo.
I notice the latest version of coreutils is 8.5 and assume that somewhere between 5.2.1 and 8.5 the oflag
option was added.
Assuming I need to upgrade coreutils to a version newer than that currently supplied with CentOS 4.8 x86_64:
- Is it safe to upgrade coreutils?
- Which is the minimum version required for
dd
to support theoflag
option? - From where can I get an RPM? I'd prefer not to compile from source.