[NBLUG/talk] Floppy disk is inactive.

Ian Sutherland iansuth at sbcglobal.net
Thu Aug 19 06:45:06 PDT 2004


Thanks, Andrew and Lincoln, that worked. You described what I did,
pretty closely, to create the problem.

Ian


On Tue, 2004-08-17 at 19:06, Andrew wrote:

> Ian Sutherland wrote on Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:15:37 -0700:
> 
> > [root at localhost dev]# ls -l fd0
> > -rw-rw----  1 isutherl floppy 1474560 Aug 16 07:34 fd0
> 
> Aha! There's the problem. Somehow you've managed to replace the
> block special device /dev/fd0 with a regular file. As it turns
> out, that file is exactly the size of one 1440k floppy disk. And
> I see the new file is owned by isutherl, not root. isutherl, a
> mere mortal, should not be able to replace a device file which is
> (or should be) owned by root. Would I be right in guessing that
> you were trying to write a floppy image file onto a floppy disk,
> and that, as root, you copied the file from isutherl's $HOME to
> /dev/fd0? That's one way to end up with what you've got now.
> 
> I see Lincoln has shown you how to use "mknod". However, if
> you're running a 2.4 or newer kernel, there may be an easier way
> to get your floppy device back. Try moving the current /dev/fd0
> file out of the way (or deleting it entirely, if you're sure you
> don't need its contents) and rebooting. This may allow the system
> to create a proper block device file for fd0. If that doesn't
> work, then try mknod.
> 
> A.
> 
> PS: To learn a little more about "mknod" and device files, try
> Googling for [mknod device major minor]. Hopefully, that will
> turn up a few pages written in layman's terms.
> 
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-- 
Ian Sutherland
2 Varda Street
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-792-6891
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