Thanks, Galen. It does help. On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Galen Seitz <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 08/30/15 16:55, Denis Heidtmann wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 9:04 AM, Galen Seitz <[email protected]> > wrote: > ... > >> Well, to my mind, commands like mdir and mcopy are about as routine as > >> it gets, but if you're keen to use the GUI, then mtools won't be of much > >> use. I will point out that not mounting a floppy has at least the one > >> advantage that you avoid the possibility of corrupting the floppy by > >> ejecting it when it is mounted. > >> > >> galen > >> > > > > I am often hesitant to post questions here because my ignorance and > > inexperience get laid bare. I do not understand how not mounting > provides > > that protection. This lack of understanding is because I do not have a > > clear view of what happens when a device is mounted, and how the device > is > > accessed without mounting. > > When a filesystem is mounted, the linux will typically cache blocks of > filesystem data in RAM for performance reasons. Blocks of data that > need to be written back to the device (aka dirty blocks) may sit in RAM > for multiple seconds before being flushed to the device. This is one of > the reasons that graceful shutdowns are always preferred over pressing > reset or yanking the cord. In the case of a floppy or USB drive, > ejecting or unplugging is the equivalent of yanking the cord. There is > no opportunity for the system to write the data to the device, and > filesystem corruption is often the end result. > > AFAIK, the mtools commands don't do any caching of writes. When you get > the next command prompt after executing an mtool command, it is safe to > immediately eject the disk. As described above, this is not true of a > mounted filesystem. > > Hope this helps. > > galen > -- > Galen Seitz > [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
