blkcat1
Display the contents of file system data unit in a disk image.
Usage
blkcat [-ahswvV]
[-f
fstype]
[-u
unit_size]
[-i
imgtype]
[-o
imgoffset]
[-b
dev_sector_size]
image
[images]
unit_addr
[num]
Overview
blkcat displays num data units (default is one) starting at the unit address unit_addr from image to stdout in different formats (default is raw). blkcat was called dcat in TSK versions prior to 3.0.0.
Arguments
- -a
-
Display the contents in ASCII
- -f fstype
-
Specify image as a specific file type. If 'swap' is given here, the image will be displayed in pages of size 4096 bytes. If 'raw' is given, then 512-bytes is used as the default size. The '-u' flag can change the default size. Use '-f list' to list the supported file system types. If not given, autodetection methods are used.
- -h
-
Display the contents in hexdump
- -s
-
Display statistics on the image (unit size, file block size, and number of fragments).
- -u unit_size
-
Specify the size of the default data unit for raw, blkls, and swap images.
- -i imgtype
-
Identify the type of image file, such as raw. Use '-i list' to list the supported types. If not given, autodetection methods are used.
- -o imgoffset
-
The sector offset where the file system starts in the image.
- -b dev_sector_size
-
The size, in bytes, of the underlying device sectors. If not given, the value in the image format is used (if it exists) or 512-bytes is assumed.
- -v
-
Verbose output to stderr.
- -V
-
Display version.
- -w
-
Display the contents in an HTML table format.
- image [images]
-
The disk or partition image to read, whose format is given with '-i'. Multiple image file names can be given if the image is split into multiple segments. If only one image file is given, and its name is the first in a sequence (e.g., as indicated by ending in '.001'), subsequent image segments will be included automatically.
- unit_addr
-
Address of the disk unit to display. The size of a unit on this file system can be determined using the -s option.
- num
-
Number of data units to display.
The basic functionality of blkcat can also be achieved using dd. To determine which inode has allocated a given unit, the ifind(1) command can be used.
Examples
# blkcat -hw image 264 4
or
# blkcat -hw image 264
History
- Arch Linux 2026-11-01 to Debian 8 (Jessie): the text shown here
- Debian 7 (Wheezy) to Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)