Re: argh! linux and floppies
Mark Grieveson wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, that seems to help. Perhaps having it on "auto" sets up a >
>> Catch-22, wherein a floppy that needs to be formatted cannot be due
>> to > the requirement of the program having to determine the file
>> system first > (which requires that it be formatted). Or maybe not.
>> Anyway, I've had > better luck with floppies after making your
>> suggested change; so, thanks > again.
>
> When the file system type for /dev/fd0 was set at "auto", the
> computer would frequently complain, when I had an unmountable disk,
> that it could not determine the file system type. Subsequent efforts
> to format, and/or fix the disk via superformat, failed. Changing the
> file type line of "/dev/fd0" in /etc/fstab from "auto" to "vfat" left
> the machine with no question as to what the file system type of the
> disk was; hence, I believe, it overcame that hurdle to identify other
> errors (bad block, etc), and, more often than before, I was able to
> format and make the disk usable.
That's nuts! I made this change also, and now superformat worked without
complaining, and the one floppy I've tried (which previously I could not
format to save my life) seems to be working fine. Even though I was
telling some of the utilities I was trying to use what filesystem/size
to use, they'd fail. Then this simple little change works (or at least
seems to, with my very limited test sample). Those utilities *should*
have worked; decreases my respect for Debian just ever so slightly.
--
Kent West
Westing Peacefully <http://kentwest.blogspot.com>
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