Jeff Vian wrote:
On Sat, 2006-09-30 at 00:23 -0400, fedoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Jeff Vian wrote:
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 17:24 -0400, fedoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Joe Smith wrote:
fedoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I've been using core 4 for quite some time now and this is the first
time i've had to think about device nodes. I'd like to mount a floppy
that's formatted to 1680 density but can't figure out how the device
nodes work. ...
I hate to ask, but did you try it? The fd0...fdn devices are supposed to
auto-detect the actual capacity and density of the disk in the drive.
Yup. After reading the udev stuff.
[root@apollo ~]# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy/
[root@apollo ~]# ls /media/floppy/
?.? 8v??.?? fp??????.?1? ??syslin.ux ???.u??
????????.??? }???.?b? f?>?tf??.t?? ????????.?t? ???}????.u}?
?.??> ??b?6?t?.??? f!?txf?.? ???????.t?= ???????u
?<??@???.??? b??????u.??? ???h.??? ?????!?t.?aq u????u?.???
???.??? ??cbt.^?f ?>lu.?hu &?tf??4u.?.? _w??p??.??_
??.??? dlinux s.ys? pamsu7f?.>du ?t??< v.?n?
0uf???8u.f)? f??bss.??? p??s??.??? t??x?.??x
The 1680 density is NOT a dos/vfat format. IIRC that is a MAC format
and needs to be mounted as such for proper access.
Not true. In fact, Microsoft used to use 1680 density for its install
disks. I've no idea if it was ever used for Macs, though. In any case,
it mounts fine on core 3 with -t vfat.
I dimly remember that Win95 (the last version that did a floppy install)
had higher than standard density diskettes for the install. I never did
know exactly what density it was, and the floppy install for windows
disappeared after that use.
The example i posted above was to show that the disk was not
automagically detected by udev as 1680. That is what i would expect to
see on my core 3 box if i used /dev/fd0 (because it's the wrong density).
core 3:
[root@poseidon ~]# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0u1680 /media/floppy/
works fine.
core 4:
[root@apollo ~]# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0u1680 /media/floppy/
mount: special device /dev/fd0u1680 does not exist
With Core 3 and earlier all the possible device types were created
in /dev. In later releases they saw fit to remove them and they now
have udev and hal to do the automatic configuration for you.
I bet if there was a rule for udev to create the device you could get it
to mount under FC4 & FC5.
OK, i've come across this page:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html
I'm wading through it now, but it's pretty opaque to me. What i'm trying
to figure out is whether or not /sbin/hotplug can tell that the disk is
at a higher density. Understandably, there's not a whole lot about
floppies in any of the udev/hotplug docs i've seen.
And i've been poking around in /etc/udev & /etc/dev.d but haven't yet
figured out how this should work.
Alternatively, if you know the specific characteristics of the device
you could use mknod to create it manually.
Yeah, i can do that, though i'd have to take measures to ensure udev
didn't disappear the node on reboot. In any case, i'm somewhat without
clue as to the major & minor numbers required.
Still working on it ....
