To mount a disk on /mnt, use the following command lines:
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
mkdir /mnt
floppycontrol -pP --printfdcstate floppycontrol --debug and
floppycontrol --reporting 0. Note that floppycontrol
--debug generates a huge output. Thus, try
first with --reporting. Please note also that both
commands are drive specific, and that the default drive is
/dev/fd0. So, if you experience a problem on /dev/fd1, use
floppycontrol --debug -d/dev/fd1.
Then include the kernel messages as well as the application messages
with your bug report. If you're using X windows, you won't see the
kernel messages appear in your xterm window. Use dmesg to get
them. dmesg includes all messages since boot (or as many as fit in the
buffer, if there are too many messages). Use dmesg also before
executing the command, in order to find out which messages were
generated by the command, and which ones were generated by earlyer
commands. Alternatively, you may get the user-printk
module which allows you to insert "comments" into the stream of
console messages.
floppycontrol -P do?
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CAUTION: If you have an /etc/mtools file AND an ~/.mtoolsrc file, the ~/.mtoolsrc file overrides /etc/mtools. The home directory used for ~/.mtoolsrc is $HOME, if that is undefined, it is derived from $LOGNAME, and if that's undefined too, it is derived from getlogin, and finally from getuid.
There are also compiled-in defaults, which are used if neither /etc/mtools, nor ~/.mtoolsrc are found.
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On some models, both options may be required, on others, none are
required.
More info about IBM Tinkpads on Linux can be found here.
Drive_nr identifies the drive. It ranges from 0 to 3 for
drives connected to the first controller, and from 4 to 7 for drives
connected to the second controller.
Type is the type of the drive or media. The exact meaning of
this (drive or media) is still being discussed. Traditionally, this
letter described the type of the drive (density, 5 1/4 or 3
1/2). Lower case letters described 5 1/4 drives, and upper case
letters describe 3 1/2 drives. h or H meant high density drives, d or
D meant double density drives. Initially this letter described the
type of the drive and not the type of the media in the
drive. For instance, a format meant for accessing 720k double density
disks in a high density drive was called h720k and not d720k. The
reason for this is that for 5 1/4 drives the parameters for accessing
a disk do not only depend on the format of the disk, but also on the
drive type. The format of the disk is already implied by the capacity,
and so the type letter is used to describe the type of the
drive. However, this dependency on the drive type only
exists for 5 1/4 drives. For 3 1/2 drives, this is not needed, and as
3 1/2 drives are more frequent, people started forgetting about this,
and understood that the letter described the media
format. When support for extra density drives was added to the kernel,
people still used the name H1440 for accessing high density disks
using their extra density drive. By the way, several distribution use
this scheme. In order to calm down the confusion, we propose to
make the type letter again describe the type of the
drive. However, all 3 1/2 drives are now described by a
unique type letter: "u". This means universal (one letter fits all 3
1/2 formats). Moreover the u resembles the Greek letter mu, as in
microfloppy. So the recommended name for a device node allowing to
read 1440K disks in a 3 1/2 drive (no matter its density) is called
u1440. Note that this is now lowercase. However, this new
convention is still subject to discussion.
Capacity is the capacity of the media in K bytes. Fortunately, this
leads to no ambiguity.
Example:
A device node allowing to use 720K 5 1/4 floppies in a high density
drive connected as first unit to the second controller is called
/dev/fd4h720
Right now, MAKEFLOPPIES supports all three conventions (media, drive,
and "u"), you may chose amongst them using command line switches.
14. My drive doesn't detect disk changes / When I type mdir a:, I get
the directory listing of the previous disk.
This means that there is a problem with the disk change line. This
problem may have several reasons:
a. The disk change line is near the edge of the cable, and is the
first line to suffer if the cable is not inserted straight. Press
gently on the connectors of your floppy disk cable, in order to ensure
that all wires make contact.
b. Because the disk change line is near the edge of the cable, it is
also the first line to suffer if the cable is damaged. If necessary,
buy a new cable, they cost less than five dollars.
c. On some drives, the disk change line may be chosen by jumper. Make
sure that your floppy controller board and your drive agree which line
is the disk change line. The usual location is line 34.
d. Some older drives don't support the disk change line at all. In
this case, you have to configure the floppy driver to work around the
problem. Use 'floppycontrol --broken_dcl' to do this. Now the floppy
driver assumes that the disk is changed whenever the device node is
closed and then re-opened. This is less efficient, as it results in
many useless cache flushes, so use it only if you really need it. This
command has to be issued after each reboot, so I suggest you put it
into your /etc/rc files.
It is assumed that your second controller lives at 0x370. If it uses
another I/O base-address, change this address in the floppy.c. The
drives on the second controller use the minor device numbers 128-131
for the generic device, and 132-255 for the fixed geometry device. The
following formula gives the minor number:
Switch off the FIFO by adding
Which minor device number should I use for 2m formats?
2m formats don't have a minor number associated with them, they can
only be accessed using the "generic format" devices (i.e. /dev/fd0,
/dev/fd1). I have an IBM Thinkpad :-(
Don't panic. Add the line 'floppy=thinkpad' to your lilo boot
parameters. This can be entered at the lilo prompt after the name of
the kernel image. It can also be specified in the lilo.conf file, by
adding the following line:
With some IBM thinkpads, it's also possible to make their floppy
drive work by toggling the "FLOPPY" option in CMOS from "auto" to
"on". However, apparently this CMOS option is not available on all
models. append = "floppy=thinkpad"
What are the minor device numbers for the floppy device nodes?
The major device number for the floppy drives is 2. The minor device
number is calculated using the following formula:
minor_device = format_nr * 4 + 128 * fdc_nr + unit_nr
(fdc_nr identifies the floppy disk controller, and unit_nr identifies
which drive on the floppy disk controller to be used) format_nr
identifies the format (see the README file in fdutils for more
details). If format_nr is 0, the device is an autodetection device.
Use the MAKEFLOPPIES script included in the fdutils package to
automatically create the needed devices. What are the recommended names for the floppy device nodes?
Floppy drives are named
fd drive_nr type max_capacity. I get "No such device or address" errors for various floppy related commands.
This message can mean one of several things: I have a HP Omnibook 6000 :(
These laptops are supplied with a floppy-drive & fdc combo which
doesn't support DMA :( Just add floppy=nodma to your Lilo
command line.
More info about the Omnibook and linux can be found here.
I can't get my floppy drive going, is there another method to install?
You may also install via hard disk and initrd. You need a big enough
hard disk to do this (and it takes a little bit more time than the
usual method). The following method presumes that it is possible to
access the disk using DOS.
Steps 5 to 10 may be skipped if your laptop has a CD-ROM drive :-)
#!/bin/sh
. etc/rc
/bin/sh
Is it possible to use two floppy disk controllers under Linux?
YES. To use both controllers, boot the kernel with the lilo parameter
'floppy=two_fdc'. This parameter can be given on the lilo prompt, just after
the name of the kernel. It can also be specified in the /etc/lilo.conf file
by adding the following line:
append = "floppy=two_fdc" minor = fdc * 128 + geometry * 4 + unit
See the README file in fdutils for more details. Is it possible to boot off these special format disks?
Yes. Make sure you have a version of lilo more recent than v18, and
put the following line into your /etc/lilo.defines before compiling
it:
This enables Lilo to boot from disks with up to 44 sectors (i.e. more
than you'll ever see :-) ) It allows to boot from ED disks and from
disks with more sectors than usual (up to 21 on a HD disk, 42 on an ED
disk). However, 2m and Xdf disks cannot be booted using this method.
-DXL_SECS=44
I get "Unable to allocate DMA memory" messages when trying to use
the floppy.
This happens whenever the memory is too scarce to allocate the floppy
driver's DMA buffer. It is possible to use the floppy driver without
DMA, and in that case, the floppy driver uses vmalloc'ed memory, which
is more readily available. In order to disable DMA, use the
floppy=nodma boot flag. If you use the floppy driver as a
module, set the environment variable 'floppy' to 'dma'.
I have a Micron Millenia Transport.
Apparently, these laptops are supplied with a floppy controller which
doesn't support the fifo.floppy=nofifo to your Lilo command line.