GNU ddrescue 1.20 released

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

I am pleased to announce the release of GNU ddrescue 1.20.

GNU ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or 
block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying to rescue the 
good parts first in case of read errors.

GNU Ddrescuelog is a tool that manipulates ddrescue mapfiles, shows 
mapfile contents, converts mapfiles to/from other formats, compares 
mapfiles, tests rescue status, and can delete a mapfile if the rescue is 
done.

The homepage is at http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

The sources can be downloaded from http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ddrescue/ 
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/ddrescue/ or from your 
favorite GNU mirror.

The sha1sum is:
7e64aea5744a195094f11f9d24486853141a7d49  ddrescue-1.20.tar.lz

This release is also GPG signed. You can download the signature by 
appending ".sig" to the URL.

Changes in version 1.20:

  * "logfile" has been renamed to "mapfile" everywhere, even in long 
option names. ("--domain-logfile" is now "--domain-mapfile", etc). The 
format of the mapfile remains the same; only the name has changed.

  * The short name of option "--synchronous" has been changed to "-y".

  * The long name of option "-d" has been changed to "--idirect".

  * The new option "-D, --odirect" has been added. This introduces a 
subtle backward incompatibility because "-D" was the short name of 
option "--synchronous".

  * The new option "-J, --verify-on-error" has been added. It verifies, 
after each read error, that the input device is still returning 
consistent data.

  * The new option "--max-read-rate" has been added.

  * "direct disc access" now can copy arbitrary domains by reading 
whole sectors and writing only the requested part.

  * Accounting change; only bad_sector blocks are now included in 
"errsize".

  * The estimated remaining rescue time is now shown on the screen.

  * Times are now shown in days, hours, minutes and seconds, instead of 
as a fraction of the appropriate unit.

  * Fill mode has been extended to write location data into each sector.

  * An emergency save of the mapfile has been added. It can be 
activated in case of ddrescue having trouble writing the mapfile.

  * Device name is now shown with "--ask" or "-vv" on Haiku.

  * Read-only mapfiles, like domain mapfiles or input mapfiles for 
ddrescuelog, can now be read from standard input if a hyphen '-' is used 
as mapfile name.

  * Ddrescuelog can now show the status of more than one mapfile.

  * "ddrescuelog --create-mapfile -" now writes the mapfile to standard 
output.

  * The new chapter "Optical media" has been added to the manual.

  * The configure option "--enable-linux" has been renamed to 
"--enable-non-posix".

  * The targets "install-compress", "install-strip-compress", 
"install-info-compress" and "install-man-compress" have been added to 
the Makefile.


Please send bug reports and suggestions to address@hidden


Regards,
Antonio Diaz, GNU ddrescue author and maintainer.