GNU ddrescue 1.18.1 released

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

I am pleased to announce the release of GNU ddrescue 1.18.1.

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.

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:
97cd3c6c783f3dc5685f0147dc83f3c94fb36b4c  ddrescue-1.18.1.tar.lz

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

Changes in version 1.18.1:

(This stable version is numbered 1.18.1 because a bug preventing 
compilation on systems where time_t != long was discovered after 
releasing 1.18, but before announcing it).

  * A bug has been fixed in the "or" and "xor" operations of ddrescuelog.

  * The new option "-H, --test-mode" has been added.

  * The new option "-L, --loose-domain" has been added to ddrescue and 
ddrescuelog.

  * The new option "-N, --no-trim" has been added.

  * The new option "-O, --reopen-on-error" has been added.

  * The new options "-1, --log-rates" and "-2, --log-reads" have been 
added. They produce data files usable by plotting utilities like gnuplot.

  * The option "-K, --skip-size" has been extended to accept a maximum 
skip size and to disable skipping.

  * The long name of option "-r" has been changed to "--retry-passes" 
to make it clear that ddrescue tries each sector only once per retry pass.

  * The short name of option "--generate-mode" has been changed to "-G".

  * The default value of option "-l, --logfile-size" has been increased 
to 10000 (from 1000).

  * If ddrescue is interrupted by a signal, it now terminates by 
raising the signal received.

  * The algorithm of the copying phase has been changed. It now marks 
as non-trimmed just the failed blocks, skips beyond them, and tries the 
skipped areas later in two additional passes (before trimming), 
reversing the direction after each pass. The third pass is a sweeping 
pass, with skipping disabled. The new method is faster around large 
errors, keeps the logfile smaller, and produces better starting points 
for trimming, which now tries the smallest blocks first.

  * Speed has been improved when using complex domains with option "-m, 
--domain-logfile".

  * Current total run time is now shown on the screen.

  * The pass number and direction are now shown during the copying phase.

  * The message "About to copy an unknown number of bytes" is now shown 
when the size of the input file can't be determined.

  * The option "-B, --binary-prefixes" has been added to ddrescuelog.

  * The new option "-C, --complete-logfile" has been added to ddrescuelog.

  * The new option "-P, --compare-as-domain" has been added to ddrescuelog.

  * Many improvements have been made to the documentation.

  * "ddrescue.texinfo" has been renamed to "ddrescue.texi".


Please send bug reports and suggestions to address@hidden


Regards,
Antonio Diaz, GNU ddrescue author and maintainer.