Table of Contents
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux Date: 2002-03-01 13:17:20 PST
> Q1: Is the format of a floppy used in Linux ext2? i.e., is there a > 'standard' format for floppies in Linux and does it vary by distro?
There is no standard. A floppy is a disk, and it has whatever filesystem its creator wants it to have. If you create the filesystem, you can do:
mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0
to make a Second Extended (ext2) filesystem, or:
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/fd0
to make a FAT32 filesystem.
> Q2: When you make a rescue disk, does it use the 'standard' Linux format or > a different 'special' one?
I can't answer this one, but I have seen rescue disks that had no filesystems on them (just a boot loader in the MBR and a kernel right behind it). In such a case, the floppy cannot be mounted (merely booted from).
> Q3: The prompts in Linux will sometimes say to insert a 'formatted floppy' > prior to writing something for you. Do they mean an MS-DOS format or an > ext2 format?
Either kind, I suspect. They want to mount it to write files on it, and the mount command will auto-detect the kind of filesystem on it.
> Q4: I tried the 'mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0' command to make a floppy into an > ext2 disk and it seems to work. HOWEVER, the surprising and disconcerting > thing about it was that the command execution took all of about 5 seconds. > There was no track-by-track formatting or verification of tracks/blocks > across the entire disk. Is this normal?
Yes. mkfs writes very little data to the floppy to create an ext2 filesystem. It does not verify the integrity of the floppy (not its job).
> How can I verify media with an FDD
You can do this (but it destroys all data on the floppy):
# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/fdtest bs=1024 count=1440 # md5sum -b /tmp/fdtest [remember the output of this command] # dd if=/tmp/fdtest of=/dev/fd0 # dd if=/dev/fd0 | md5sum -b [compare this output the the above output]
If the outputs of the two md5sum commands are the same (and no "I/O error" is reported by dd, then the floppy is OK (for now).
Francis Litterio