Can't I get a /dev/one?

[Jim Higson]

On Wednesday 14 July 2004 05:34, William M. Quarles wrote:
> Jim Higson wrote:
> > On Wednesday 14 July 2004 00:02, William M. Quarles wrote:
> >>Okay, so there is a /dev/zero.  Shouldn't there be a /dev/one, too?  Is
> >>there any way that I can fill a file or device full of ones?
> >
> > Btw, why do you want this?
>
> I guess that I should have said that from the beginning, so that I
> wouldn't have to write this as frequently.
>
> I'm trying to fill a hard drive with all ones.  I know how to fill it
> with all zeros:

Well, yes - I got that bit. Actually, what I really wanted to know is why you 
would want to do that.

If I knew why I could advise. For example if you are trying to securely erase 
the contents of the drive there's a program called shread, in the GNU 
coreutils (so you *will* have it!)

try:
man shread

or just go ahead:
shread /dev/hda

What do you mean by "all ones" - all binary ones (which is filling it with 
byte 255) or ones on the byte or word level?

> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=1024 count=58615704
>
> I don't know how to fill it with all ones.
>
> I'm working within pretty low functionality on this system (RHL 9
> installation CD rescue mode).
>
> Thanks,
> William