Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
Things do not seem to work the same from computer to computer in linux. I have formatted 5 floppies in a row with no failures and my fstab looks like this: /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto user,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,exec,codepage=850,noauto 0 0 No comma but a space after auto. So there is something not functioning the same on my computer as there is on yours. Also read floppies just dandy. I thought I had a lot of problems with my floppy, but it turns out I just have one. Anyone with floppy set to auto in fstab try this and see if you get the same results I do. Go to K menu, Configuration, Hardware, Floppy Formatter. Do a full format with the ext2 file system. Unless I su to root and use mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy, I can't mount it with the icon or the terminal. If I format it in DOS everything works fine. TIA, Randy Donohoe Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
On Friday 23 November 2001 15:19, you wrote: Gidday folks (sorry coundn't find the original posters name) I can't help wondering if the fault lies with the floppy drive being used rather than the system formatting incorrectly rgrds max I thought the same at first. So I kicked ol' M$windblows into life which was still residing in a corner of the first harddisk. You'd be amazed how stable this OS is, if you don't use it except through wine :) Anyway... the floppy drive worked flawlessly :( BTW I have to withdraw my remark that win4Lin formats fine on the same machine. It formats sure enough... but the result is a floppy full of funny non-readable directories. regards, Harm Bathoorn Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
On Wednesday 21 November 2001 05:12 pm, H.J.Bathoorn wrote: Since mdk8.1 I'm burning floppies like hell. It's not the drive itself, I tested that, so it's got to be Mandrake. I know Linux is more demanding on floppy quality, but 2 good floppies out of 10 is overdoing it :( Anybody else have similar troubles? Yes, but not that bad, and with many Linux versions. I believe my problems stem from not havin bought any new floppy's in several years. They do go bad. Also many were overformatted to = 1992K and that tends to make them forever unstable, even when reformatted to 1440k. What fs (ext2, DOS)are you using? and what does your floppy fstab line look like? -- Tom Brinkman Galveston Bay, USA Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
On Thursday 22 November 2001 12:06, you wrote: On Wednesday 21 November 2001 05:12 pm, H.J.Bathoorn wrote: Since mdk8.1 I'm burning floppies like hell. It's not the drive itself, I tested that, so it's got to be Mandrake. I know Linux is more demanding on floppy quality, but 2 good floppies out of 10 is overdoing it :( Anybody else have similar troubles? Yes, but not that bad, and with many Linux versions. I believe my problems stem from not havin bought any new floppy's in several years. They do go bad. Also many were overformatted to = 1992K and that tends to make them forever unstable, even when reformatted to 1440k. What fs (ext2, DOS)are you using? and what does your floppy fstab line look like? Uumh! Yes I'd already taken all that into consideration and found that it had gotten worse in 8.1. Funny thing; the same floppies formated on a pure DOS machine are found acceptable again by mdk. Another funny thing is that win4Lin does a reasonable job as well, though! I haven't tried fiddling with the etc/fstab entry yet, wanting to know if this was happening to others as well. Apparently it does! My guess is that setting fs to fat instead of auto might help, but I'm not sure as that will force me to have to change the line everytime I want to mount a ext2 floppy. On the other hand I'm not so sure on the /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd0u1440 devices and the way they are/or are not linked. (and what's the fd-link to ../proc/self/fd doing there?)...any idea's? Here's my floppy line from etc/fstab, it's hasn't been altered since the installation. /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto user,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,exec,codepage=850,noauto 0 0 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
On Thursday 22 November 2001 08:11 am, H.J.Bathoorn wrote: I haven't tried fiddling with the etc/fstab entry yet, wanting to know if this was happening to others as well. Apparently it does! My guess is that setting fs to fat instead of auto might help, but I'm not sure as that will force me to have to change the line everytime I want to mount a ext2 floppy. On the other hand I'm not so sure on the /dev/fd0 and /dev/fd0u1440 devices and the way they are/or are not linked. (and what's the fd-link to ../proc/self/fd doing there?)...any idea's? Here's my floppy line from etc/fstab, it's hasn't been altered since the installation. /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto user,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,exec,codepage=850,noauto 0 0 Actually setting fstab to auto is what fixes it for me none/mnt/floppy supermount auto,user, iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,exec,codepage=850,noauto 0 0 I got that line from a Mandrake developers post on the cooker ML, you might wanna try it. There should be a comma after auto, BTW. Supermount is optional, but works flawlessly for me ;) -- Tom Brinkman Galveston Bay, USA Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
O On Wed, 21 Nov 2001 23:12:04 +0100, H.J.Bathoorn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello all, Since mdk8.1 I'm burning floppies like hell. It's not the drive itself, I tested that, so it's got to be Mandrake. I know Linux is more demanding on floppy quality, but 2 good floppies out of 10 is overdoing it :( Anybody else have similar troubles? Harm As a matter of fact, yes. But, I am convinced that it is the quality of the disks themselves, not the operating system (I have the same problem with Caldera, Suse, RH, Mdk7.2 and mdk 8.0). One box of disks (ATT) were exactly as you describe--I had 2 disks of 10 that formatted without errors. On the average, I get about one disk a box that is fubar. However, I did get some Sony disks a couple of months ago and had maybe one fail out of 50. I guess the moral of this story is--you get what you pay for. As an aside, I tried a few of the failed disks on Windows, and they failed there, too, after failing the dos format on a Linux box. I know, this is all anecdotal evidence, but it's what happened to me. e. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name=message.footer Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Description: Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] formatting floppies
floppies. floppies formatted in linux is generally unrecognizable by Windows* just like the emergency bootdisk made during installation. or so I am said. ;-) It depends on what you mean by 'fomatting'. Floppies in Windows are formatted, but the filesystem is FAT, and it's laid down as part of the formatting process. In Windows, this is a single step, and you can't separate the function of formatting (writing format info and verifying for bad blocks etc.) and the function of making the filesystem. In Linux, these are two separate steps. In fact, floppies don't need to have filesystems on them. The boot floppy is one example although there is a filesystem in that case. If you format (i.e., make the filesystem) in Linux as FAT, you can read the disk in Windows. However, Windows can't handle other filesystem formats, raw tar/cpio 'floppy tapes' etc. David E. Fox Thanks for letting me [EMAIL PROTECTED]change magnetic patterns [EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk. --- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
