Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
Pollywog [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | On 09-Apr-99 Gary L. Hennigan wrote: | Pollywog [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | | I was going about reformatting a floppy disk I use to backup my Exim | | filters | | and configs and I remembered something: DOS floppies are limited to 8.3 | | type | | names. I believe there are some ways around this which I cannot | | remember, but instead I will keep using ext2 on some floppies like this | | one. | | Do you need to read these floppies on a DOS system? If not don't even | bother formatting them, just use tar on the device itself, e.g., | | tar cvf /dev/fd0 files | | I was not certain that I could do that. Does this mean I can tar a small | directory tree and copy it to floppy using any filename I like? I don't think you can rename the files with tar. You may be thinking of a tar archive, where you do tar cvf filename /usr/directory. To copy the files to floppy you use the device is place of filename. | For instance, could I tar (recursively) /local/mail and copy all the files to | a floppy with the directory structure intact? I know this can be | done on tape. Others have answered this and yes it is quite possible. You can even span multiple floppies using the -M option to tar. Also, someone else mentioned that a bad sector would disallow you from reading the floppy. While formatting the floppy can certainly be done I'd personally just recommend using the -W tar option to verify it. This just causes tar to reread what it just wrote to the floppy and compare it to the original. It's too time consuming to do this on most tapes, but on a floppy it doesn't take much time at all, particularly a single floppy. Gary
Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
Quoting John Hasler ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
Pollywog writes:
For instance, could I tar (recursively) /local/mail and copy all the
files to a floppy with the directory structure intact?
Yes. Just like tape. Note, however, that one bad sector will make the tar
unreadable. If you are going to do this you should test the floppies and
not use any that aren't perfect. The simplest way to test floppies is to
format them.
This is one reason I use zip for all files I put on FAT disks,
even if they're already compressed. Just typing unzip -t /floppy/*
is enough to test them all, and you can even recover information
if the zipfiles break. Other reasons are, of course, preservation
of long filenames and meta information as with .t{ar,gz} files.
Cheers,
--
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: +44 1908 653 739 Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail: David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
Disclaimer: These addresses are only for reaching me, and do not signify
official stationery. Views expressed here are either my own or plagiarised.
Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
Hello, Pollywog: I was going about reformatting a floppy disk I use to backup my Exim filters and configs and I remembered something: DOS floppies are limited to 8.3 type names. I believe there are some ways around this umsdos - unix filesystem on top of MS DOS - that way you'll be able to read the files from a DOS machine. (There'll be an extra file visible in DOS, which contains the permissions/ownerships/long names.) Be careful when changing this under DOS - umssync can handle most changes, but replacing a something (eg a softlink) with something of the same name but completely different type (eg a directory) can mess things up no end. vfat - win95 filesystem - provides long filenames but nothing else You could also use tar (or one of its siblings) and write the tar.gz file on an msdos-formatted floppy (as .tgz) or directly onto the raw device. Jiri
Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
John Hassled, Yes. Just like tape. Note, however, that one bad sector will make the tar unreadable. If you are going to do this you should test the floppies and not use any that aren't perfect. The simplest way to test floppies is to format them. Tarring directly to the device gets you maximum data density, but at a price. Also, there are the 1880k and 1992k formats. Hmm, at least there used to be; I don't see devices for these now that i'm using 2.2. Anyway, superformat supports these formats; see the man page. Depending upon your drive or quality of disks, these may or may not be useful. The cheap drive in my desktop writes well but reads poorly on 1992, and only about 1 in 3 1882's for tom's unix come out usable on it. But my thinkpad loves the formats, and can read many that the desktop can't, even though the desktop wrrote them. I don't know how you do a raw tar to these; maybe a MAKEDEV? rick p.s. To use them as diskettes, after you superformat, you need to mke2fs them. also, as near as i can tell, you can't use FAT on them, either; it complains that it doesn't have a second something-or-other that it needs. But why bother; the dark side wouldn't read them anyway. p.p.s. Only use these for very temporary storage transfer, they seem highly unstable. They're great for transferring lots of stuff to an old laptop without a network connection, but i wouldn't trust data to them. For that matter, don't trust data to 1.4M floppies, either . . . --
Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
Pollywog [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | I was going about reformatting a floppy disk I use to backup my Exim filters | and configs and I remembered something: DOS floppies are limited to 8.3 type | names. I believe there are some ways around this which I cannot | remember, but instead I will keep using ext2 on some floppies like this one. Do you need to read these floppies on a DOS system? If not don't even bother formatting them, just use tar on the device itself, e.g., tar cvf /dev/fd0 files Gary
Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
On 09-Apr-99 Gary L. Hennigan wrote: Pollywog [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | I was going about reformatting a floppy disk I use to backup my Exim | filters | and configs and I remembered something: DOS floppies are limited to 8.3 | type | names. I believe there are some ways around this which I cannot | remember, but instead I will keep using ext2 on some floppies like this | one. Do you need to read these floppies on a DOS system? If not don't even bother formatting them, just use tar on the device itself, e.g., tar cvf /dev/fd0 files I was not certain that I could do that. Does this mean I can tar a small directory tree and copy it to floppy using any filename I like? For instance, could I tar (recursively) /local/mail and copy all the files to a floppy with the directory structure intact? I know this can be done on tape. thanks -- Andrew [PGP5.0 Key ID 0x5EE61C37]
Re: using FAT floppies- a drawback
Pollywog writes: For instance, could I tar (recursively) /local/mail and copy all the files to a floppy with the directory structure intact? Yes. Just like tape. Note, however, that one bad sector will make the tar unreadable. If you are going to do this you should test the floppies and not use any that aren't perfect. The simplest way to test floppies is to format them. Tarring directly to the device gets you maximum data density, but at a price. -- John HaslerThis posting is in the public domain. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do with it what you will. Dancing Horse Hill Make money from it if you can; I don't mind. Elmwood, Wisconsin Do not send email advertisements to this address.
