From: spcberto@cicero.spc.uchicago.edu (Robert Osterlund) Subject: Re: SLS installation nightmare: broken change-line support Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 15:34:08 GMT
One kind soul, Roger Wolf, was good enough to suggest a solution to my
problem with broken change-line support. He wrote:
>I usually do the equivalent of
>
>dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/null bs=1k n=8192
>
>to flush the buffers, when one of my buffers in the cache gets corrupted.
>
> Roger
>P.S. You may check if the n= parameter is really called "n" and not
>something else.
Following his suggestion, I wrote a shell script, cfd (for "change floppy
disk"), to automate this process.
Usage: cfd -t <minix|msdos> -f <0|1> -m <mntpt>
Basically, all this does is umount the previous floppy, prompt for insertion
of the next floppy, dd its contents to /dev/null, then mount the new floppy
at the designated mount point. The process takes about 60 seconds (ouch!).
Curiously, if I set "if=/dev/fd0h1200" the buffer doesn't flush
successfully, but if I set if=/dev/fd0" it does.
It's a kludge, but--hey--it works! I'll have to live with it unless and
until somebody makes the necessary kernel mods or creates/extends a Linux
utility to deal with the problem.
It should have been clear that the problem stems from my floppy drives
being broken. I don't fault the designers of Linux or the packagers of
the SLS distribution at all for not foreseeing this problem. Still, it
would be great if somebody could solve this problem cleanly.
Anyway, how cool! I've got DOS & UNIX both on the same box!
Bob Osterlund
Social Sciences & Public Policy Computing Center
University of Chicago