*BSD News Article 5606


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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!bs
From: bs@Germany.EU.net (Bernard Steiner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: How to format UNIX floppies under 386BSD
Date: 25 Sep 1992 11:23:29 GMT
Organization: EUnet Backbone, Dortmund, Germany
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Distribution: world
Message-ID: <19usrhINN222@disaster.Germany.EU.net>
References: <1992Sep24.142441.17045@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> <1992Sep24.113641.36338@news.th-darmstadt.de>
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In article <1992Sep24.113641.36338@news.th-darmstadt.de>, deeken@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Hans-Christoph Deeken) writes:
> In article <1992Sep24.142441.17045@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au>, rcskb@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Kendall Bennett) writes:
> > How does one go about formatting a floppy disk to have a UNIX file system
> > on it? I assume you must use newfs, but this will only do a high level
> > format of the disk, and it would have to be disklabelled. What if the
> > disk has _not_ been formatted with and MSDOS format program?
> 
> Just use newfs with the appropriate entry from disktab (3in,5in, etc).
> That does the trick. No other formatting necessary.
> 
> You might want to tune the filesystem parameters for space, since you get
> only about 1.2MB free on a 3.5" HD floppy with the supplied disktab entries.

NACK

386bsd is not up to low-level formatting floppies, i.e. makeing the magnetic
particles on the floppy cuddle together to make blocks and tracks.

However, putting a filesystem on a low-level-formatted floppy is no probelm
and the abovementioned procedure should work.
However, do yourself a favour and cut down on cylinder groups and tune the
bytes-per-inode to your needs.

-Bernard
-- 
Bernard Steiner, FB Informatik/IRB, Uni Dortmund,    vox +49 231 755 2444
Postfach 500500, D-W-4600 Dortmund 50, Germany       fax +49 231 755 2386
bs@Germany.EU.net          ...!uunet!unido!bs

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