dd Command - How to determine cbs

Question

I have a input file in EBCDIC format. I have no idea how many records there are in the file. In that case, if I want to convert it to ASCII, what would be ibs, obs, and cbs?

Answer 1

The block sizes are generally not crucial these days. If you were actually handling tapes (you know, the old 1/2 inch reels rocking back and forth type, or maybe QIC, quarter-inch cartridge), then block sizes mattered. When playing with disk, the block sizes don't matter very much.

So, for ibs and obs, either leave the default, or just use bs=16k (or 256k, or any other number), which does both ibs and obs at the same size. The cbs (conversion buffer size) could probably be the same size, too.