formatting a floppy disk

[Grant Willey]

Under v11.0, how do I format a 3.5" DS/HD floppy? Do I use the mediainit command?

[Patrick Wallek]

Yes, I believe that mediainit would be appropriate for this.

From the mediainit man page:

Format an HP 9122 SS/80 3-1/2-inch flexible disk with an interleave factor of 2, 1024-byte sectors, and double-sided HP format:

# mediainit -i 2 -f 3 /dev/rdsk/9122

[Grant Willey]

I get an error "can't open file /dev/floppy/c0t1do: no such device or address" Any ideas?

[Patrick Wallek]

What does ioscan show as the device file for the floppy drive?

# ioscan -fn

Also make sure there is a disk in the drive.

[Grant Willey]

ioscan shows its there. 8/16/10.1 is the device, shows it's claimed.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

Could you give the output of
ioscan -fnc floppy.

You have posted "can't open file /dev/floppy/c0t1do" are you shure about the number/letter ?

Robert-Jan.

[Grant Willey]

sorry, the device is /dev/floppy/c0t1d0. It is present and it is CLAIMED. Any ideas?

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Think I found something,
Look at this link.

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

Robert-Jan.

[Grant Willey]

Thank you for the link Robert. I still couldn't get the disk to format in Unix format so that I could tar files to it, but that's OK. The only real use for the floppy drive is to receive a DOS file, which now seems to work fine. Still not sure what fixed it, but it works. I still have one question, is it possible to format a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy so that you can tar files to it? I was trying the mediainit command, but couldn't get it to work. Kept giving me an I/O error. Any ideas? I also couldn't get the floppy to mount either, kept getting the same errors the fellow was getting in the link you sent to me. Looks like he finally gave up, but I want to know what's up?? Any help is much appreciated!

[Frank Slootweg]

> I still couldn't get the disk to format in Unix format so that I could
> tar files to it, but that's OK.

"Unix format" does not really exist. You can have HFS filesystem format,
vxfs/JFS filesystem format, (raw) tar(1) format, (raw) cpio(1) format,
etc., etc.. See later for tar(1) format.

> The only real use for the floppy drive is to receive a DOS file, which
> now seems to work fine. Still not sure what fixed it, but it works.

The simplest method is just to use pre-formatted 'DOS' diskettes or
format the diskette on a 'DOS' PC. There is no need to do a low-level
format on diskettes which were once properly low-level formatted (i.e.
mediainit(1M) is not needed), and you can not (easily) high-level (i.e.
filesystem level) format a diskette in 'DOS' format on HP-UX.

> I still have one question, is it possible to format a 3.5" 1.44MB
> floppy so that you can tar files to it? I was trying the mediainit
> command, but couldn't get it to work. Kept giving me an I/O error.
> Any ideas?

If you want to treat the diskette in 'raw' format, i.e. as if it was a
tape, then you do not have to (low-level) format it if it was ever
low-level formatted.

If you want to put a (HFS or vxfs/JFS) *filesystem* on the diskette and
put a tar archive *in* that filesystem, then you have to use newfs(1M),
just as you would for a real (hard) disk.

> I also couldn't get the floppy to mount either, kept getting the same
> errors the fellow was getting in the link you sent to me. Looks like
> he finally gave up, but I want to know what's up?? Any help is much
> appreciated!

You can only mount a diskette which was *high*-level 'formatted' with
newfs(1M). I.e. you can not mount a 'DOS' diskette and you can not mount
'raw' tar/cpio/etc. diskettes.