dd: The dd command is used to copy or convert data.
if: Input file, specifies /dev/zero a special file that produces an infinite stream of zero bytes.
bs: block size, sets the block size to 1 gigabyte (1G), meaning dd will read and write data in chunks of 1 GB at a time.
count=10: This tells dd to process 10 blocks, each 1 GB in size. So, this will generate 10 GB of zeroed data.
That’s all it takes. The only price I pay is that I’m serving a 10MB file now on some occasions. If I have an article going viral, I decrease it to the 1MB file, which is just as effective.
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1G count=10 | gzip -c > 10GB.gz
Here is what the command does: