[newbie] Writing to floppy disc

[Andrew Barnes]

Sorry, forgot about how to format floppy [1]:

mkfs -t vfat /mnt/floppy

I'm not entirely sure that pointing to /mnt/floppy will work, you might have
to point to its' mapping in /dev which could be /dev/fd0:

cd /mnt ; ls -l | grep floppy

...should show where /mnt/floppy is pointing to in /dev to help out if this
is the case.  Or you can check /etc/fstab.

=============================
Why is ls -l /mnt/floppy not working after changing floppies?
=============================

The floppy drive isn't getting re-mounted when you switched floppies.  
When you change, you have to unmount (using umount) and then mount the drive
once the new media is in.  You'll find similar issues with CDs - if you
can't open the cd tray, try unmounting the cd drive.

To unmount the floppy [2]:
umount /mnt/floppy

To mount the floppy [2]:
mount /mnt/floppy

=============================
What is lost+found?
=============================

At boot, the system will try to recover any corrupt files that it finds. The
result of this recovery operation will be placed in this directory.  Each
partition has its own lost+found directory.

=============================
Appendix
=============================

[1] Windows uses FAT16 when creating the file system on floppies; because
both FAT16 and FAT32 are well supported under Linux, a floppy can be shared
back and forth so long as the FAT16 file format is used when formatting.
However other formats can be used, and the capacity can change depending on
the file system.

[2] Be aware that you can't mount/umount while in the directory you are
trying to mount/umount.  For example - if pwd lists /mnt/floppy, I'd get an
error if I then tried to use "mount /mnt/floppy".

-----Original Message-----
From: newbie-admin@vlug.org [mailto:newbie-admin@vlug.org] On Behalf Of John
Bartlett
Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 11:27 PM
To: newbie@vlug.org
Subject: RE: [newbie] Writing to floppy disc

On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 19:06, Andrew Barnes wrote:
> Numerous bad GUI experiences led me to get more comfortable with the
command
> line - the nice part to this is that it doesn't matter what
> version/distro/etc this is done on.  
> 
> >From a command shell/terminal window you can run:
> 
> cp [/where/the/file/is] /mnt/floppy
> 

Thanks Andrew,

I did that and it worked. I still can't format a floppy though.

Also, the ls command from the floppy directory reads the file I just
copied to the floppy (export.ged) even though I replaced the floppy with
another and then removed the floppy altogether. In other words, I cannot
read an ls of the floppy.

bash-2.05b$ pwd
/mnt/floppy
bash-2.05b$ whoami
john
bash-2.05b$ ls
export.ged  lost+found

I still get this with NO floppy inserted.

What's with this "lost+found"?

John

using Red Hat 9 in Cobble Hill BC

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