Re: Strange dd error

[Johan Ehnberg <johan@ehnberg.net>]

Chris Kenrick wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 03:04:22AM -0400, Scott Henson wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 02:35, Chris Kenrick wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 02:30:13AM -0400, Scott Henson wrote:
> > >
> > > > As of late I have been getting a strange dd error when trying to write
> > > > stuff to my floppy drive.  The command is 
> > > >
> > > > dd if=memtest86.bin of=/dev/fd0 
> > > >
> > > > and I get an output of
> > > >
> > > > dd: writing to `/dev/fd0': Input/output error
> > > > 9+0 records in
> > > > 8+0 records out
> > > >
> > > > I try using it on normal files and it seems to work just fine.  I was
> > > > wondering if this was something going wrong with my hardware, kernel, or
> > > > dd.  It has been happening over several kernels(and I no longer have the
> > > > kernel that I last remember using this successfully on).  I am currently
> > > > running debian sid on 2.4.20-pre1-ac1.  Any ideas? Thanks in advance.  
> > >
> > > Dud floppy disk itself?  Maybe the drive could get dodgy with age,
> > > too...
> >
> > Does this with multiple floppies.  Oh, it also encounters read errors
> > when trying to read off a floppy and write an image. 
> >
> > But I think it was the drive cause I pulled it out and replaced it with
> > an extra I had laying around.  Is there any way to test a floppy drive
> > and make sure it was the drive and not something else in the loop? 
>
>
> Guess you could always dd an image to a floppy, then dd it back, and
> compare md5sum with the original.  Do this multiple times, and see how
> it goes...
>
> - Chris


This is probably not what you problem was, but I've encountered a 
problem with the same dd error. If a floppy is formatted as something 
else than the normal /dev/fd0, say /dev/fd0u1722, and you access it 
through /dev/fd0 you'll get an error after the 5-20 first records.

Formatting the floppy using /dev/fd0 fixes this.

--
Johan Ehnberg
johan@ehnberg.net
"Windows? No... I don't think so."