Hi Doug, First of all, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I have now had some time to look into this further and think I have resolved the issue as per the attached patch:
Essentially, mindi creates a set of 1440kb boot and root floppies just fine, but deletes it right after. I've fixed this a while ago for the case when mindi gets called by mondoarchive but missed the case where mindi is called directly. I have in fact now made it so that the images are deleted when the result of creating the floppies is non-zero in both cases rather than simply not deleting the images at all, even if they are faulty. Patch mindi_bts348966.diff is against mindi-1.06-2, i.e. for sid. Patch mindi_bts348966_sarge.diff does exactly the same for the mindi version in sarge. Further to that, when you look at the beginning of mindi (in fact line 65), you'll find the following line: FORCE_DUAL_FLOPPIES=no You'll have to change this to 'yes' because the failsafe kernel in sarge fits nicely together with the other stuff on a 1722 combined boot/root floppy. Setting FORCE_DUAL_FLOPPIES to 'yes' enforces the creation of 1440 boot and root floppies. I think I'll change this in the package as I can't see any drawbacks apart from 2.88MB space used on the hard drive. Alternatively, I'll add the to the mindi manpage or other documentation. I have been able to reproduce the problem you have reported. The patch together with changing the FORCE_DUAL_FLOPPIES parameter to 'yes' reliably and reproducably fixes the issue for me, i.e. 1440kb boot and root floppies get created. It would be nice though, if you could test things on your end in the next few days or so to very that it fixes the issue for you as well. (Please note that the fix will only be available through new packages in sid to start with. There maybe backports down the track.) Also, I will move the dependencies on dosfstools and binutils from the mondo to the mindi package to avoid the issues you encountered. Thank you for pointing this out. I believe with the patch and the dependency changes all issues you reported in the bug report are fixed. Best regards & thanks a lot, Andree On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 11:59 -0500, Doug Tutty wrote: > Hi Andree, > > I'll intersperse my reply with your questions, but I have removed the > mindi package and associates to save room. The answer for me may be to > revert the / and /boot directories to ext3 so that a 2.2 kernel > bootfloppy can fix problems. > > Thanks, > > Doug. > > > On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 11:02:21PM +1100, Andree Leidenfrost wrote: > > Hi Doug, > > > > I just when I started discussing with upstream whether we could abandon > > floppy support... ;-) > > Please don't abandon floppy support, and I wish that the install > procedure for Debian worked better with floppy. > > > > > Ok, for starters, have you verified that your floppies are undamaged? > > > Yes, I did several things: they were brand new Maxell. They > come formatted with standard dos, I ran mbadblocks and there > were none; I formatted ext2 -c-c and there were no bad blocks; > I copied the 3.0 debian boot and root images to them and tested > that they do boot. Reformatted again ext2 -c -c and still no > bad blocks. > > > Secondly, from the log it doesn't look like 1440 floppies actually got > > created but rather 1722 ones. Your BIOS or floppy may not support > > booting from this. > > > Ahh. No I can't boot from them. This could do it. Perhaps > I'll reinstall mindi and see how to specify 1440 floppies only. > > > What do you see in directory '/root/images/mindi' - it should contain a > > number of files with '.img' ending. Could you email the output of 'ls > > -l /root/images/mindi'. > > > > I'll probably have to look into why 1140 images were not created - > > probably size restrictions. > > > > As a general note, I am not really sure whether mindi is going to do > > what you want to. It is mainly used in conjunction with the mondo > > package to produce disaster recovery media. However, it should > > definitely be able to create boot floppies. > > All I need is a boot floppy with a kernel that understands jfs. > This is for disaster recovery. Prior to this, I used: > > Debian 3.0 boot disk > my own root disk; > creates a /tmp ramdisk and a /usr ramdisk > first extra disk that is manually mounted > and has a script that copies everything to /usr > and alters the path > second extra disk that is manually mounted > and has a script that copies everything to > /usr/local, and alters the path. > > This gives me every tool I could want. Most are contained in > the busybox binary. It also includes text output of the man > pages for everything on the disks. My actual backup media has > the output of sfdisk so that I can restore the partition table > is that's caput. I have the list of packages installed at > backup time. I have the entire /etc directory, a tar.bz2 > archive of everything that users consider 'essential' that I can > access from the boot floppies if need be. All this fits on one > floppy, with everything else on Zip disks. > > My only problem is if I use a jfs root directory. > Also, now is what happens if my Debian 3.0 install CD's die? I > wish there was a set of floppies that took one from bare metal > to a ppp link to debian.org to get packages. > > Cheers > > Andree > > -- > > Andree Leidenfrost > > Sydney - Australia > > > > -- Andree Leidenfrost Sydney - Australia
--- mindi.orig 2006-02-11 17:12:45.000000000 +1100 +++ mindi 2006-02-11 18:40:40.000000000 +1100 @@ -1923,8 +1923,10 @@ cp -f $TMP_ROOT/mindi.rdz $imagesdir/mindi-root.1440.img res=$(($res+$?)) rm -f $imagefile - [ "$res" -ne "0" ] && LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies\n" - rm -f $imagesdir/mindi-*.1440.img + if [ "$res" -ne "0" ]; then + LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies\n" + rm -f $imagesdir/mindi-*.1440.img + fi return $res fi free_space=`df -k $mountpoint | tail -n1 | tr -s ' ' '\t' | cut -f4` @@ -2061,7 +2063,10 @@ cp -f $TMP_ROOT/mindi.rdz $imagesdir/mindi-root.1440.img res=$(($res+$?)) rm -f $imagefile - [ "$res" -ne "0" ] && LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies\n" + if [ "$res" -ne "0" ]; then + LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies\n" + rm -f $imagesdir/mindi-*.1440.img + fi return $res fi free_space=`df -k $mountpoint | tail -n1 | tr -s ' ' '\t' | cut -f4`
--- mindi.orig 2005-10-10 23:27:47.000000000 +1000
+++ mindi 2006-02-11 19:04:24.530384682 +1100
@@ -1957,8 +1957,10 @@
cp -f $TMP_ROOT/mindi.rdz $imagesdir/mindi-root.1440.img
res=$(($res+$?))
rm -f $imagefile
- [ "$res" -ne "0" ] && LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies"
- rm -f $imagesdir/mindi-*.1440.img
+ if [ "$res" -ne "0" ]; then
+ LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies"
+ rm -f $imagesdir/mindi-*.1440.img
+ fi
return $res
fi
free_space=`df -k $mountpoint | tail -n1 | tr -s ' ' '\t' | cut -f4`
@@ -2098,7 +2100,10 @@
cp -f $TMP_ROOT/mindi.rdz $imagesdir/mindi-root.1440.img
res=$(($res+$?))
rm -f $imagefile
- [ "$res" -ne "0" ] && LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies"
+ if [ "$res" -ne "0" ]; then
+ LogIt "Warning - failed to create 1.44MB boot/root floppies"
+ rm -f $imagesdir/mindi-*.1440.img
+ fi
return $res
fi
free_space=`df -k $mountpoint | tail -n1 | tr -s ' ' '\t' | cut -f4`
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