Attachment 19390 Details for Bug 34474 – file.diff

[patch] file.diff

file.diff (text/plain), 7.45 KB, created by Julio Merino on 2002-01-31 02:20:01 UTC

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Creator: Julio Merino

Created: 2002-01-31 02:20:01 UTC

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>*** chapter.sgml.old	Wed Jan 30 21:01:41 2002
>--- chapter.sgml	Wed Jan 30 21:02:05 2002
>***************
>*** 1994,2007 ****
>      </sect2>
>    </sect1>
>  
>    <sect1 id="backups-floppybackups">
>      <title>Backups to Floppies</title>
>  
>      <sect2 id="floppies-using">
>        <title>Can I Use floppies for Backing Up My Data?</title>
>!       <indexterm><primary>backup floppies</primary></indexterm> 
>!       <indexterm><primary>floppy disks</primary></indexterm> 
>!       
>        <para>Floppy disks are not really a suitable media for
>          making backups as:</para>
>  
>--- 1994,2155 ----
>      </sect2>
>    </sect1>
>  
>+   <sect1 id="floppies">
>+     <sect1info>
>+       <authorgroup>
>+ 	<author>
>+ 	  <firstname>Julio</firstname>
>+ 	  <surname>Merino</surname>
>+ 	  <contrib>Contributed by </contrib>
>+ 	</author>
>+       </authorgroup>
>+       
>+     </sect1info>
>+ 
>+     <title>Floppy disks</title>
>+ 
>+     <para>Floppy disks are, nowadays, an old-fashioned medium to
>+       store/share data. Although, there are still some times when you
>+       need to use them, because you do not have any other removable
>+       storage media or you need to use what you have saved in them on
>+       any other computer.</para>
>+ 
>+     <para>This section will explain how to use floppy disks in
>+       FreeBSD, that is, formating and copying/restoring data from
>+       them. But... I really have written this to help you about how to
>+       create forced-size floppies.</para>
>+ 
>+     <sect2>
>+       <title>The device</title>
>+ 
>+       <para>Floppy disks are accessed throught entries in
>+         <filename>/dev</filename> (like any other device). To access the
>+         raw floppy disk you can use <filename>/dev/rfdX</filename>,
>+         where X stands for the drive number, usually 0. When the disk is
>+         formatted you can use <filename>/dev/fdX</filename>, or
>+         whichever of the other devices named
>+         <filename>/dev/fdXY</filename>, where Y stands for a
>+         letter. These are all the same.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>Other important devices are
>+         <filename>/dev/fdX.size</filename>, where size is a floppy disk
>+         size in kilobytes. These entries are used at low-level format
>+         time to determine the disk size.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>Sometimes you will have to (re)create these entries under
>+         <filename>/dev</filename>. To do it, you can issue:</para>
>+ 
>+       <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>cd /dev && ./MAKEDEV "fd*"</userinput></screen>
>+     </sect2>
>+ 
>+     <sect2>
>+       <title>Formatting</title>
>+ 
>+       <para>A floppy disk needs to be low-level formated before it can
>+         be used.  This is usually done by the vendor but you may want to
>+         do it to check media integrity or to force the disk capacity to
>+         be bigger.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>To format the floppy at a low-level fashion you need to
>+         use <application>fdformat</application>. This utility expects
>+         the device name as an argument. We will use those
>+         <filename>/dev/fdX.size</filename> devices, which will allow us
>+         to format the floppy to its real size, or force them.  So you
>+         insert a new 3.5inch floppy disk in your drive and issue:</para>
>+ 
>+       <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/rfd0.1440</userinput></screen>
>+ 
>+       <para>This will take a while... You should notice any disk error
>+         here (this can help you determining which disks are good or
>+         bad).</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>To force the floppy disk size, we will use other entries
>+         in <filename>/dev</filename>.  Get the same floppy and issue:
>+ 
>+       <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/usr/sbin/fdformat /dev/rfd0.1720</userinput></screen>
>+ 
>+       <para>It will take some more time than before (forced disks are
>+         slower).  When it finishes, you will have a 1720kb floppy disk,
>+         but for the moment you will not notice any difference. You may
>+         use other disk sizes that you can find in /dev, but the most
>+         stable/compatible is the 1720kb for 3.5inch disks.</para>
>+     </sect2>
>+ 
>+     <sect2>
>+       <title>The disklabel</title>
>+ 
>+       <para>After low-level formatting the disk, you will need to
>+         place a disklabel on it.  This disklabel will be destroyed
>+         later, but it is needed by the system to determine the size of
>+         the disk and its geometry later.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>The new disklabel will take over the whole disk, and will
>+         contain all the proper information about the geometry of the
>+         normal or forced floppy.  Take a look to
>+         <filename>/etc/disktab</filename> now; you will see geometry
>+         values of all kinds of floppy disks.
>+ 
>+       <para>You can run now <application>disklabel</application>
>+         like:</para>
>+ 
>+       <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/sbin/disklabel -B -r -w /dev/rfd0 fd(size)</userinput></screen>
>+ 
>+       <para>Replace fd(size) with fd1440, fd1720 or whichever size you
>+         want.  The last field instructs disklabel which entry to take
>+         from <filename>/etc/disktab</filename> to use.</para>
>+     </sect2>
>+ 
>+     <sect2>
>+       <title>The filesystem</title>
>+ 
>+       <para>Now your floppy is ready to be high-level formated. This
>+         will place a new filesystem on it, which will let FreeBSD read
>+         and write to the disk. After creating the new filesystem, the
>+         disklabel is destroyed, so if you want to reformat the disk, you
>+         will have to recreate the disklabel another time.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>You can choose now which filesystem to use on your floppy.
>+         You can use UFS or FAT, though UFS is not a good idea for
>+         floppies.  Choose FAT which is nice for floppies.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>To put a new filesystem on the floppy do this:</para>
>+ 
>+       <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>/sbin/newfs_msdos /dev/fd0</userinput></screen>
>+ 
>+       <para>As we created a disklabel before, <application>newfs</application>
>+         will be able to fetch disk data and construct the new
>+         filesystem. And now, your disk is ready for use...</para>
>+     </sect2>
>+ 
>+     <sect2>
>+       <title>Using the floppy</title>
>+ 
>+       <para>You have two choices to use the floppy. You can either
>+         mount the disk with <application>mount_msdos</application>, or you can
>+         use <application>mtools</application>.
>+         <application>Mtools</application> are great, but you will need
>+         to install them from the ports system.</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>Try it; issue a <application>mdir</application>. If you forced the
>+         disk, you will notice its extra size!</para>
>+ 
>+       <para>A last note about forced disks: they are compatible with
>+         practically all other operating systems without any external
>+         utility to read/write them.  Microsoft systems will recognize
>+         them without problems. But note that there may be times when the
>+         floppy drive itself is not able to read them (this may happen
>+         with very old drives).</para>
>+     </sect2>
>+   </sect1>
>+ 
>    <sect1 id="backups-floppybackups">
>      <title>Backups to Floppies</title>
>  
>      <sect2 id="floppies-using">
>        <title>Can I Use floppies for Backing Up My Data?</title>
>!       <indexterm><primary>backup floppies</primary></indexterm>
>!       <indexterm><primary>floppy disks</primary></indexterm>
>! 
>        <para>Floppy disks are not really a suitable media for
>          making backups as:</para>

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