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 Please, no off-list mail at all at all. This address accepts mail only from Debian lists. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
