Aldo Foot writes:
On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: <...snip...>Whenever I'm trying the command above I have: floppy --ext2 --format A: floppy 0.16 Copyright 2001-2006, Double Precision, Inc. /dev/fd0H1440: Tiedostoa tai hakemistoa ei ole No formattable capacities for /dev/fd0You're missing some device node. Run 'MAKEDEV fd0'_____ How was he able to get the "Formattable capacities for /dev/fd0:" he showed in a previous email?
floppy first opens /dev/fd0 and ioctls the device driver to read the available format capacity. An open of /dev/fd0 succeeds even if the inserted floppy is unformatted.
But you cannot issue a format on /dev/fd0 in this instance, because the floppy is unformatted. A format issued on /dev/fd0 only works for floppies that are already formatted, and uses the same density as the existing format. Therefore, floppy takes the selected format capacity from /dev/fd0 (the highest supported, by default), then maps it back to its corresponding /dev/fd0xxxxxx device name, opens that, and then issues the format ioctls.
This is really ancient stuff that I haven't touched in a while. I was even sufficiently motivated -- seeing that this hasn't been forgotten -- to go in and add the --ext3 option. When I did that -- and only after rummaging around the house to find an actual floppy -- I discovered that 1.44mb is too small for ext3, hahahaha.
I know that he's missing /dev nodes because that's exactly what happened to me, when I tried to test it. Somehow, at some point in the last six years, a bunch of /dev/fdnxxxxxx device nodes vanished in Fedora, and it was necessary to run MAKEDEV manually to bring them back. WTF???
And I don't remember why floppy wound up in the util-linux-ng rpm. It was never part of util-linux. It's a separate package, which is included in the Fedora util-linux-ng RPM. The floppy tarball also includes a GTK tool, which gets stripped out and not even included in util-linux, since it requires gtk.
Attachment:
pgpBkyMUN5GOd.pgp
Description: PGP signature
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
