From: John Terry (jrt@hawk.dsto.gov.au)
Date: 09/28/92


From: jrt@hawk.dsto.gov.au (John Terry)
Subject: Re: Still severe bugs in MS-DOS Filesystem ?
Date: 28 Sep 1992 23:01:44 GMT

mrex@aix01.rz.fht-mannheim.de (Martin Rex) writes:

>I have been experiencing problems using MS-DOS formatted disks
>from linux (0.97pl1 and 0.97pl5). Sometimes when I mount a floppy
>from linux, I get a garbled directory, with funny names of non-existing
>files (usually some special chars). The last time it happend was tonight,
>when I mounted a 720K-formatted floppy (3.5"). It looked ok from MS-DOS
>(checkdisk), but the difference is (besides some other parameters)
>the number of directory slots in the root directory and the cluster size (?)
>Everything worked fine, when I used a formatted 1.44MB disk, but always
>when I mounted the 720K disk, I got an error from ls about a funny looking
>filename on the disk -- which was actually emtpy.

[... rest deleted ...]

I have also noticed what may be a related problem. My work machine has
a 1.2M drive in A: and a 360K drive as B: connected through the same
cable to my HD controller card. There is no problem with
using the A: drive, but the B: drive will only log correctly the first
disk I put in it. Thereafter, no matter how many times I change the
disk, it continues to list the directory of the first disk. This
happens irrespective of whether I 'umount' and 'mount -tmsdos' or just
use the Mtools package, so I assume it's kernel related. Any one had
similar experience or ideas as to the cause?

-- 
John R Terry                                        jrt@aeg.dsto.gov.au
Head, Avionic Computer Systems,                     Ph:  +61 8 259 6982
Aircraft Systems Division, DSTO Salisbury, S.Aust.  Fax: +61 8 259 5507