pretty easy question

pretty easy question

[Danny Keogh]

Ok people this might seem like a pretty dumb question but how the hell do 
you format a floppy disc in linux?  I'm using slackware if that makes a 
difference.

Thanks in advance

Danny Keogh
ICQ:  72503517
mailto:dwkeogh@optushome.com.au

Re: pretty easy question

[Tommy Moore]

Just do:
mke2fs /dev/fd0

Tommy

Re: pretty easy question

[Adam Myrow]

That won't work if the disk has never been formatted before.  If you have
to format a floppy, first do "superformat /dev/fd0" as root, and to make
it Linux native, do the "mke2fs /dev/fd0."  Otherwise, it will be for DOS
or Windows.  Another note, if a user is in the group "floppy," they can
format floppies without first having to "su" to root.

Re: pretty easy question

[Kirk Wood]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Adam Myrow wrote:
> That won't work if the disk has never been formatted before.  If you have
> to format a floppy, first do "superformat /dev/fd0" as root, and to make
> it Linux native, do the "mke2fs /dev/fd0."  Otherwise, it will be for DOS
> or Windows.  Another note, if a user is in the group "floppy," they can
> format floppies without first having to "su" to root.

You do not have to use superformat first. This is an optional tool. You
can in fact simply run the command "mke2fs /dev/floppy". The tool
superformat gives you additional control features and will allow you to
fit more information into the disk. That being said, it is not going to be
found on every linux box around. It isn't on mine. Then again, it may have
been part of the default install. I simply don't know. I do know that I
just formatted a floppy and stored a file on it simply using the "mke2fs
/dev/fd0" command.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missle at
a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
	- President George Bush

Re: pretty easy question

[Jacob Schmude]

Hi
   To format a linux floppy, the command is:
mke2fs /dev/fd0u1440
This will make a linux-formatted floppy, size 1.44 MB. If you're formatting a floppy for the first time, you must use /dev/fd0u1440 as your device name to set the capacity to 1.44 M. After that, the device /dev/fd0 can be used.
   If you want to format a dos-compatible floppy under linux, the command would be:
mkdosfs /dev/fd0u1440
   Note that unless your user is in the floppy group, these operations must be performed as root. If you're using your user account, add the /sbin/ directory to the beginning of the command name, like this:
/sbin/mke2fs /dev/fd0u1440

HTH


On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 08:46:14PM +1000, Danny Keogh wrote:
> Ok people this might seem like a pretty dumb question but how the hell do 
> you format a floppy disc in linux?  I'm using slackware if that makes a 
> difference.

RE: pretty easy question

[Holmes, Steve]

I remember doing an fdformat first when I wrote to floppies but this brings
up an interesting question, When trying to create a slackware compatible
boot disk recently, I used fdformat, on /dev/fd0u1680 so I could get the
higher capacity;. I could read the files I wrote to it but I could never
boot with it. I wonder if this superformat gets around some of this somehow.
The bottom line here is when formatting floppies greater than 1440K, I could
not read them by subsequently mounting /dev/fd0 but only with /dev/fdu1680
or whatever the size. Upon booting however, I could not get the u1680 to
happen.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kirk Wood [mailto:cpt.kirk@1tree.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 7:06 AM
To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: pretty easy question


On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Adam Myrow wrote:
> That won't work if the disk has never been formatted before.  If you have
> to format a floppy, first do "superformat /dev/fd0" as root, and to make
> it Linux native, do the "mke2fs /dev/fd0."  Otherwise, it will be for DOS
> or Windows.  Another note, if a user is in the group "floppy," they can
> format floppies without first having to "su" to root.

You do not have to use superformat first. This is an optional tool. You
can in fact simply run the command "mke2fs /dev/floppy". The tool
superformat gives you additional control features and will allow you to
fit more information into the disk. That being said, it is not going to be
found on every linux box around. It isn't on mine. Then again, it may have
been part of the default install. I simply don't know. I do know that I
just formatted a floppy and stored a file on it simply using the "mke2fs
/dev/fd0" command.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missle at
a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
	- President George Bush


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