[106] in linux-announce channel archive
Fdutils-4.1 - floppy configuration utility
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Wirzenius)
Mon Jan 23 09:21:33 1995
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 14:18:57 +0200
From: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: linux-activists@niksula.hut.fi, linux-announce@vger.rutgers.edu
X-Mn-Key: announce
From: Alain.Knaff@imag.fr (Alain Knaff)
Reply-To: Alain.Knaff@imag.fr
Subject: Fdutils-4.1 - floppy configuration utility
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Keywords: floppy, raw commands, extra capacity disks, special formats
Organization: ?
Approved: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu (Lars Wirzenius)
Followup-to: comp.os.linux.misc
I have upload fdutils-4.1 to sunsite, tsx and ftp.imag.fr. This
package contains utilities for configuring the new Linux floppy
driver, for formatting extra capacity disks (up to 1992K on a high
density disk), and for sending raw commands to the floppy controller.
It also contains a new version of mtools to access these disks. These
utilities were originally part of the fdpatches package. Its floppy
driver is now part of the standard kernel.
At sunsite, fdutils are now in Incoming/fdutils-4.1.src.tar.gz and
will soon be moved to a more permanent location. At ftp.imag.fr, they
are in pub/Linux/ZLIBC/fdutils/fdutils-4.1.src.tar.gz
Since 1.1.41, you may use formats with more than the usual 18 (or
15, or 36) sectors per track and with more than 80 tracks. For
instance, it is now possible to squeeze 1992 K on a HD 3''1/2 disk,
and 3984 K on an ED disk.
The new floppy driver also has:
1) support for 2 controllers.
2) support for logical blocksizes other than 1024 bytes
(you can use the floppy drive as a slow swap device with the Alpha
driver)
3) support for sectors bigger than 512 bytes
4) lots of configuration options, support for sending raw commands
to the floppy disk controller, ...
The fdutils package contains utilities to configure the new driver
(change error behaviour, autodetection sequences, timeouts and many
other parameters) It also contains a new mtools to format and to use
the new high capacity floppy disks. It has the following new features:
1) Support for variable sector sizes.
2) Support for Ciriaco Garcia's "2m" formats.
3) Support for formatting 16-bit fat disks.
4) Support for formatting ED disks (Their capacity is too big to
use a 12 bit FAT and 1 sector clusters. It either uses bigger
clusters or a 16 bit FAT)
5) Mtools can now set the disk geometry on Linux. (Useful for
reading the extended-capacity disks. This was already possible on
unixpc and SPARC)
6) New mmount command. Reads the bootsector, sets the geometry
and finally mounts the disk.
7) Mwrite can now write stdout to a dos file: mwrite - a:test
8) Mread now also acts as mtype: mread a:test -
These two features are useful for piping and for scripts.
9) Mtools now tries 3 sources to get its drive geometry.
configuration: first ~/.mtoolsrc, then /etc/mtools, and finally
compiled-in. ( The two first are conditional on LOADDEVS being
defined ). LOADDEVS is now compatibles with the various geometry
setting routines (init_linux, init_sparc and init_unixpc).
10) Bug fixes for -t mode of mwrite and mread. (For certain
file sizes the trailing dos end-of-file character wasn't
correctly written.)
11) Bug fixes for "drive probing code" in init.c (Now failure to lock
onto a disk causes always trial of the next configuration. Before,
mtools used to abort on certain cases). Similar fixes in mformat.
12) Optimization/bug fix of cluster/fat repartition in mformat.c
13) Made fat checking code optional. (1.72mb disks mformatted with old
mtools were almost always rejected) To bypass fat-checking set the
environment variable MTOOLS_FAT_COMPATIBILITY.
14) Mtools now opens /dev/tty to ask for confirmation messages. This
way, it doesn't interfere with mreading/mwriting from/to stdin/stdout.
15) Support for serial numbers
16) Can read disks whose number of tracks is not specified (e.g. old
Syquests)
Changes from fdutils-4.0 to fdutils-4.1: Mostly bugfixes, and a new
MAKEFLOPPIES command:
- "Bogus" Notes file
- mtools opens device in O_EXCL mode to avoid mdir'ing a mounted disk
- mtools checks the fat to avoid mdir'ing a non-msdos disk
- Makefile changes
- Repaired print_option's bug, which added the index for optable twice.
- Fixed definition of some two-dimensional arrays. (Gave warning with gcc
2.6.2)
- Added fd.h and fdreg.h dependencies to Makefile.
- Updated the FAQ to reflect recent and not so recent changes to the driver.
- Some fixes & changes to the mtools scripts.
- Some changes to the mtools (See mtools/Release.notes file for details).
- Superformat now calls the new mbadblocks file
- floppy_module.patch removed.
- Added more missing files.
- Avoids to write second (phantom) FAT to 2m disks
- New Makefloppies script.
- Corrections to FAQ and module directory
- Corrections to format table in README
- Small patches to mtools to read old Syquests without size indication.
- Other patch to mtools to make offset work again.
- lock and unlock are now known by fdrawcmd.
See also the included README and mtools/Release.Notes files for more details.
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