View source for Floppy disks

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{{Article summary text|This article discusses methods of using floppy disks on Arch Linux.}}
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== Introduction ==

Altough rarely used nowdays, one still might need/want to use a floppy disk (for example, I practice guitar to backing tracks played from my Yamaha keybord, which has only a flopp disk drive interface). Common tasks with floppies are described bellow, with available tools to acomplish them.

== Installation ==

=== Kernel module ===

Most of the floppy drives should be supported by stock kernel (mine always were). External USB drives might be an exception - I haven't tested that yet. Module ''floppy'' is used as a drifer for floppy drives.

 $ locate floppy.ko
 /lib/modules/2.6.30-ARCH/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko
 $ pacman -Qo /lib/modules/2.6.30-ARCH/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko
 /lib/modules/2.6.30-ARCH/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.ko is owned by kernel26 2.6.30.4-1

As you can see, it comes with the stock Arch kernel.

Module ''floppy'' is not loaded automatically by default for me. I load it manually each time I use floppy disk"

 $ modprobe floppy

=== Packages ===

There are two packages in the Arch package repository I know of - [http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/dosfstools/ dosfstools] and [http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/mtools/ mtools]. Respective commands belong to these packages (grepped output of ''pacman -Ql dosfstools mtools''):
 dosfstools /sbin/dosfsck
 dosfstools /sbin/dosfslabel
 dosfstools /sbin/fsck.msdos
 dosfstools /sbin/fsck.vfat
 dosfstools /sbin/mkdosfs
 dosfstools /sbin/mkfs.msdos
 dosfstools /sbin/mkfs.vfat
 mtools /usr/bin/amuFormat.sh
 mtools /usr/bin/floppyd
 mtools /usr/bin/floppyd_installtest
 mtools /usr/bin/lz
 mtools /usr/bin/mattrib
 mtools /usr/bin/mbadblocks
 mtools /usr/bin/mcat
 mtools /usr/bin/mcd
 mtools /usr/bin/mcheck
 mtools /usr/bin/mclasserase
 mtools /usr/bin/mcomp
 mtools /usr/bin/mcopy
 mtools /usr/bin/mdel
 mtools /usr/bin/mdeltree
 mtools /usr/bin/mdir
 mtools /usr/bin/mdu
 mtools /usr/bin/mformat
 mtools /usr/bin/minfo
 mtools /usr/bin/mkmanifest
 mtools /usr/bin/mlabel
 mtools /usr/bin/mmd
 mtools /usr/bin/mmount
 mtools /usr/bin/mmove
 mtools /usr/bin/mpartition
 mtools /usr/bin/mrd
 mtools /usr/bin/mren
 mtools /usr/bin/mshowfat
 mtools /usr/bin/mtools
 mtools /usr/bin/mtoolstest
 mtools /usr/bin/mtype
 mtools /usr/bin/mxtar
 mtools /usr/bin/mzip
 mtools /usr/bin/tgz
 mtools /usr/bin/uz

== Common tasks ==

Here are the commands needed to perform the most common tasks. In all examples, I suppose /dev/fd0 to be the linux device for the floppy drive. By default, all these tasks need to be performed as ''root'' (unless you use [[Sudo]] or something similar).

=== Format ===

 $ mkfs.msdos /dev/fd0

=== Mount ===

 $ mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

== Troubleshooting ==

Things like this can happen:

 $ mkfs.msdos /dev/fd0 
 mkfs.msdos 3.0.5 (27 Jul 2009)
 mkfs.msdos: unable to get diskette geometry for '/dev/fd0'

Which means: "Get a new floppy." Sorry (happened to my only disk available when writing this..).

== More Resources ==

* http://www.daniel-baumann.ch/software/dosfstools/ - DOS filesystem utilities (not so verbosely documented IMHO)
* http://www.gnu.org/software/mtools/ - a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS disks from Unix without mounting them

== Todo ==

* [http://linux.die.net/man/8/floppy floppy(8)]
* [http://linux.die.net/man/8/fdformat fdformat(8)]
* recovering a "dead" floppy

[[Category:Storage_(English)]]
[[Category:File_systems_(English)]]