From: harrisd@clacton.barclays.co.uk (David Harrison) Subject: Re: ``Reset-floppy called'' killed my system (0.99.8) Date: 1 Jul 1993 08:42:42 GMT
In article <5355@wegy.waldorf-gmbh.de>, andy@resi.waldorf-gmbh.de (Andreas Busse) writes:
|> 1) What you call A: is /dev/fd0, B: is /dev/fd1.
|> 2) Disks have to be formatted:
|> fdformat /dev/fd0H1440 (for a 3.5" HD Drive) will do the job (must be root)
|> 3) If you want to have msdos-formatted disk, type
|> mformat a: (or b:)
|> 4) If you want to have a Minix filesystem on these disks, type
|> mkfs /dev/fd0 (or /dev/fd1) <number of blocks>,
|> where number of blocks is 1440 for 3.5" HD.
|> 5) If you want to tar to or from the floppy, type
|> tar xvf /dev/fd0 or tar cvf /dev/fd0 <files>
|>
|> 6) If still something's going wrong, just pull out the floppy. The error
|> messages will stop after a while !
|>
|> Everything clear ?
Not so darn *fast* Andy :-)
I've got two machines running Linux 0.99pl9 from SLS 1.02. One, a no-name VESA
486DX33 never has problems with the floppy. But the other, a Compaq Contura
3/25, often gets in a twist with the floppy drive. Hmmmmmm, maybe there's a
lesson in that :-)
As Joel says, on accasion (but not always) when I try to cpio (or tar) from (or
to) the floppy I get the dreaded 'reset-floppy called' message and the whole
machine jumps about like it's going to blow up (slight exageration there ;-).
The only way to shut the damm thing up is to switch it off :-( Your claim that
ejecting the floppy cures the problem is, unfortunatly, incorrect in my case.
So, questions remain:
What causes this to happen?
Why can't the faulty process be interupted?
Actualy I think I may know the answer to the second one - could be that I have
the console device linked to /dev/tty0 so the error messages appear on all
vc's which makes it a bitch to log in again and type in a ps/kill sequence.
BTW. The floppies in question were formated on a variety of UNIX's: AIX,
Interactive & Xenix in particular.
-- David
________________________________________________________________________________
David Harrison Phone +44 (0)565 621000 Ext 4197
UNIX Systems Support Team Fax +44 (0)565 654473
Barclays Computer Operations Mobile 0836 583085 (UK only)
Radbroke Hall, Knutsford Mail david.harrison@barclays.co.uk
Cheshire WA16 9EU #include <disclaimer.h>