Format a floppy disk

[Moreau Jean-Claude]

Hi all,

I would like know the command to format a floppy disk to a dos format. But in the file /etc/default/fs, i have only the option :
LOCAL=hfs.

Best regards

[melvyn burnard]

you need to have the DOS utilities installed, and use a coommand like dosfmat (I think that is hte command)
do swlist -l file | grep MSDOS
and see if you have them
LOng time since I played with htese commands

[Moreau Jean-Claude]

I think that the command is :
mediainit -v -i 2 -f16 /dev/rfloppy/c0t1d0
and after i must launch the command : newfs -F ibm_1440 /dev/rfloppy/c0t1d0

This command last command does not work!

[Trond Haugen]

If I remember right there are several /usr/bin/dos* commands, but none to format a floppy. A trick might be to use dd to copy a image of a formated floppy to a file, and later dd that file to the floppy you want to format.

Regards,
Trond

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

take a look at next link,

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x088eabe92dabd5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

If you have an hp xterm you can do it via the F12 > Floppy > Format section.

[Darren Prior]

Hi,

I haven't really played with dosls and those other utilities since HP-UX 9. However your mediainit command looks OK (from other docs I've seen), though I think the newfs won't work as you haven't got an ibm_1440 in /sbin/lib/mfsconfig.d/. I'm not sure if a newfs -F hfs of the device will give you the correct result, but could be worth trying.

I'd suggest the easiest option is to format the disks in a PC. :)

regards,

Darren.

[Frank Slootweg]

Most diskettes are already pre-formatted in 'DOS' format, so their is no need to format them.

Also you should not re-format diskettes if they give problems, but you should throw them away.

As mentioned, if you want to do a *high* level format (HLF), i.e. put a DOS filesystem on it (because it was possibly wiped in some way), then it is best to do that on a PC.

If that is not possible, you can use dd(1) as Trond indicated, i.e.

Take an empty, DOS-formatted diskette and then do:

dd if=/dev/... bs=9k | compress >blank_DOS_image.Z

and *keep* blank_DOS_image.Z somewhere.

Then when you need to DOS-HLF a diskette (which is already LLFed), then do:

zcat < blank_DOS_image.Z | dd bs=9k of=/dev/...