Re: Please help me make the .template files for Debian CDs smaller
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Richard Atterer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> many of the floppy images on the FTP server currently start with 1k or more
> of zero bytes. This is bad for jigdo. Would it be possible to write a
> couple of random bytes somewhere in the first 1k of each image?
>
> "Random" can be anything which makes the images differ from each other in
> the first 1k - literally random data, a timestamp, or similar.
>
> This is necessary because of inherent properties of the algorithm that
> jigdo-file uses to find all the files inside the CD image. Currently, the
> 1k of zeroes prevents the floppy images from being found, so they end up in
> the .template data.
>
> I noticed that /some/ floppy images contain data in their first 1k. It's
> not necessary to change these, just the all-zeroes ones cause problems.
>
> Would it be a lot of work to arrange this? You'd do me a great favour!
Sounds like a boot sector is in order. I've just done some exploration
using a file (not a disk). mkfs.msdos puts one on, minix and ext2 don't.
A quick workaround for ext2 is to put an msdos filesystem on the floppy
image first.
Unfortunately, minix writes zeros to the first 0x400 bytes.
A problem with workarounds is that they lack convenience, and people
will forget. May I suggest a bug report against mke2fs and mkfs.minux?.
Probably people will still forget (unless it's default behaviour), but
the docs might prompt a few.
--
Cheers
John Summerfield
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