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- From: russo@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu (Thomas Russo)
- Subject: [386BSD] Disklabeling a DOS formatted floppy
- Message-ID: <RUSSO.92Nov22145945@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu>
- Sender: russo@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu (Thomas Russo)
- Organization: Center for Biomolecular Simulation, Department of Chemistry,
- Columbia University
- Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 19:59:45 GMT
- Lines: 55
-
- No, I don't want to know how to low-level format a floppy -- I know I
- need to do that from DOS.
-
- What I WANT to do now is to make a filesystem on a floppy (either 5.25
- or 3.5in), just like the dist.fs and fixit.fs floppies have
- filesystems, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to do it.
- This is what I've tried (some of them based on things I remember
- reading here on how to make bootable floppies, which isn't what I
- really want to do but hey, I just want to be able to mount a freaking
- floppy!):
-
- DOS
- format a: (that's the 5.25, or b:, the 3.5)
-
- 386BSD:
-
- 1) newfs /dev/fd0a
-
- or
-
- 2) disklabel -w fd0a floppy5
-
- or
-
- 3) disklabel fd0a > junk -- this once gave me a skeletal disklabel in
- junk, but only once.
- disklabel -R fd0a junk /usr/mdec/fdboot /usr/mdec/bootfd
-
- or
-
- 4) cat /usr/mdec/fdboot /usr/mdec/bootfd > /dev/rfd0a
-
- But none of these things do ANYTHING other than give me an error of
- the sort "ioctl: TIOCFOOBARBLETCH: device not configured", or "can't
- read disk label"
-
- I'm confused.
-
- I have tried this using DOS formatted diskettes and unformatted
- diskettes (even though I knew that wasn't supposed to work), and I
- cannot get the damned thing labeled, much less newfs it.
-
- What precise steps do I need to take to get a floppy disk to have a
- bsd filesystem on it?
-
- On another front, I seem to recall someone saying something about how
- to get mdir to stop saying "file not found" and to produce a real
- directory of the dos floppy, but I didn't save it. Could someone tell
- me why mdir (and mformat) is doing this and what I have to do to stop
- it.
-
- --
- Thomas Russo russo@nile.chem.columbia.edu
- Department of Chemistry and Center for Biomolecular Simulation
- Columbia University
-