On Tuesday 23 August 2005 10:58, Michael Adam wrote: > Hi, > > I could not tell from the documentation which is the proper way > to setup and use floppy disks on the i386 architecture, i.e. which > is the right partition to use. > I am talking about the standard 3.5 inch 1.44 MB floppy disks. > There are several possibilities to put a file system onto one: > > First of all, a floppy needs to be low level formatted, which can be > achieved by the fdformat program. (Ususally, this is not necessary > nowadays, since floppies come preformatted.) > > Then fdisk shows an empty partition table. > > Without adding a type a6 partition, I have a valid disklabel: > > 16 partitions: > > # size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg] > > c: 2880 0 unused 0 0 # Cyl 0 - 79 > > I can then do a "newfs fd0c" and afterwards the disklabel > > looks as follows: > > 16 partitions: > > # size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg] > > c: 2880 0 4.2BSD 2048 16384 80 # Cyl 0 - 79 > > And I can mount /dev/fd0c. But _strangely_, I can mount /dev/fd0a > as well! (But I can't do "newfs fd0a" ...) > > The other way would be to add a proper partition to the disklabel: > Either by doing "disklabel -w fd0 floppy3" or by interactively > adding a partition "a" that covers the whole disk. The first command > > yields a disklabel like this: > > 16 partitions: > > # size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg] > > a: 2880 0 4.2BSD 512 4096 80 # Cyl 0 - 79 > > b: 2880 0 unused 0 0 # Cyl 0 - > > 79 c: 2880 0 unused 0 0 # Cyl 0 - > > 79 > > The second command's disklabel does not have the "b" partition. > > Then, doing "newfs fd0a" or "newfs fd0c" yields a filesystem I can > mount as /dev/fd0a or /dev/fd0c in either case. The command > > "newfs fd0c" changes the disklabel to the following form though: > > 16 partitions: > > # size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg] > > a: 2880 0 4.2BSD 512 4096 80 # Cyl 0 - 79 > > b: 2880 0 unused 0 0 # Cyl 0 - > > 79 c: 2880 0 unused 2048 16384 80 # Cyl 0 - 79 > > which should actually be invalid since "a" and "c" overlap. > Anyway, it works and both partitions can be used. > > Well, I am a little confused and would like to know which is the > proper way of handling this. I think that the proper way is to > add an use partition "a", but I have seen usage of partition "c" > in several documentations on the web, so this is why I ask. > > Thanks in advance! > > Michael
I would avoid all this and use the 'mtools' package instead. It deals with msdos fat-12(?) floppies, and is tons easier to use. Then you can hand those floppies to others and they can read/write them. --STeve Andre'
