>
> Hi gang,
> I have noticed that when I format a floppy under DOS, I never seem to have >any<
>>trouble reading, writting and so forth, to them. However, when I format a >floppy
>>when running Linux, I frequently find that the mount command fails. I >have found
>>this to be the case with both ext2 as well as MSDOS filesystem >types. Also, I find
>>that if I specify a format *and* a check of the filesystem, >the check frequently
>>fails.
>It would seem that Linux is >much< fussier about the disk? I can take the same
>disks, and the same drive under DOS and no troubles. Whats up?
>>There are 2 things you may want to check...
>>1) Are you giving the correct type to the mount command?
>> If you try to mount a floppy with a dos filesystem,
>> and It has an ext2fs, mount will bitch. The reverse is also
>> true. Try commenting out any /dev/fd0 entries in fstab first,
>> as I am not sure how conflict between the command line and
>> the fstab file are resolved.
Yes, I am aware of these facets. I believe I am mounting them correctly, with
the proper entries in fstab. Note that >sometimes< the mount proccess works,
sometimes it does not. See below
>>2) Also, when you format a floppy, there are really two steps
>> involved. The first, formatting, lays out sector information on the
>> physical disk. The second, the makefs stuff, puts a filesystem on
>> the disk. In the M$ Dos/windows world, those two steps are combined,
>> since one typically has no choice of filesystems.
Yup, I am aware of this as well. The problem seems to be in the formatting
proccess itself.
>>Could you possibly Post the error messages you are receiving
>>when you try to mount one of these floppies?
>>That would help immensely.
Yup :-)
When I format a floppy I do this:
wb0poq:~$ fdformat /dev/fd0H1440 <enter>
Then I see this:
Double-sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
Formatting ... done
Verifying ... 12
At some point (this time at 12) the drive starts to "clunk, clunk,
clunk,
clunk", as it re-reads the sector, then I see:
Formatting ... done
Verifying ... read: I/O error
And I am back at the prompt. Sometimes it gets all the way to the last
track in
the verify proccess, I create a filesystem, and all is well, but
more often than
not, at some point in the verify proccess, it does the above.
Note that this problem occurs before I choose the filesystem type.
If I ignore this, and go ahead and create a filesystem thus:
wb0poq:~$ mke2fs /dev/fd0 1440 <enter>
I see this:
mke2fs 1.04, 16-May-96 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
360 inodes, 1440 blocks
72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
360 inodes per group
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
And I get the prompt back. I have found that even if the verify proccess
completes without complaint, and the mke2fs command completes without
complaint,
I often (but not always) get this when I try to mount them:
wb0poq:~$ mount /mntf
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/fd0,
or too many mounted file systems
I might then format the disk again, create the filesystem again, and it
will
mount just fine. Then a few days later.....I get the above error on the
same disk,
even though it has sat in the box in the interim. I get the
same erratic results
when I create an MSDOS filesystem. I have tryed to keep the rest of my
system in
the same operational state (mounted partitions etc) for these tests to keep
the
variables down to a minimum.
If I use the *same* disks and the *same* drive under MSDOS, format
procceds
peacefully, scandisk.exe reports no problems, all is well with the world. ;-)
All this leads me to *suspect* that there is something more critical about
how
floppys are treated by linux vs MSDOS.
Sorry this is so long, but it's makin me nuts! I want to understand whats
going
on here....
--
Genuine E-mail From the Land of the Everlasting Icicle...
Bob Liesenfeld
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
