Re: 1.3.6[0-7] floppy driver broken

David C. Niemi (niemidc@clark.net)
Sun, 25 Feb 1996 12:25:55 -0500 (EST)


On Fri, 23 Feb 1996, Michael D. Black wrote:
> At 06:04 PM 2/22/96 +0100, Michael Stiller wrote:
> >i get the following errormessages on: 1.3.60 and 1.3.67
> >toyland:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0h1440
> >dd: /dev/fd0h1440: No such file or directory
> >2881+0 records in
> >2880+0 records out
>
> Confirmed on 1.3.68 Slackware 3.0 also...
> brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 40 Apr 27 1995 /dev/fd0h1440
>
> Looks like somebody is returning a bogus error code...

Perhaps the error could be more enlightening, but it is almost certainly
not bogus.

Probably the most accurate error code would be "no such device" or "i/o
error". But I'd be *really* surprised if that command worked for you in
previous kernel revs, considering that fd0h1440 is a rare 5.25" format in
your first drive (which should be a 3.5" unless you have a very old
machine). You probably should just use "/dev/fd0" to let the kernel
figure out what density the disk is. If you need the explicit device for
some odd reason, you should have either /dev/fd0u1440 or /dev/fd0H1440
depending on the vintage of your system.

PLEASE. If you suspect a bug in the new development kernels, test it with
a production kernel first (i.e. 1.2.13), and read the documentation to be
sure that this is not how it is *supposed to* work.

David.Niemi@mail.li.org---niemidc@clark.net---703-904-3596---Reston, VA USA
Much of human misery derives from two overgeneralizations: if something is
good, more is always better; and what is good for me is good for everyone.