Mirko Parthey <mirko.part...@web.de> writes:
> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 03:32:08PM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote:
> > What happened after I zapped the floppy is that fdformat will not
> > run because it sees no pre-existing format information.
> >
> > What am I forgetting or what has changed?
>
> According to the fdformat man page, you should first set the disk
> parameters with setfdprm, or use a device like /dev/fd0H1440 which
> refers to a specific format.
>
> If any of the device nodes are missing, you can create them with mknod,
> the major and minor numbers are given in the fdformat man page as well.
Thank you as I think the problem is a knowledge base problem on
my part. The device node for /dev/fd0 is there and works properly
if the disk contains so much as a low-level format. The man page
for fdformat says:
________________________________________
The generic floppy devices, /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1, will fail to work
with fdformat when a non-standard format is being used, or if the for-
mat has not been autodetected earlier. In this case, use setfdprm(8)
to load the disk parameters.
________________________________________
Where I am confused is whether or not setfdprm must be
manually stuffed with the number of tracks, number of sectors,
etc or whether /etc/mediaprm can be made to fill in all those
data. I am not modifying the format so any list of normal
parameters for a 1.44 Mb floppy will do.
Martin
