fdwrite(1) [freebsd man page]
FDWRITE(1) BSD General Commands Manual FDWRITE(1) NAME
fdwrite -- format and write floppy disks SYNOPSIS
fdwrite [-v] [-y] [-f inputfile] [-d device] DESCRIPTION
The fdwrite utility formats and writes one and more floppy disks. Any floppy disk device capable of formatting can be used. The fdwrite utility will ask the user (on /dev/tty) to insert a new floppy and press return. The device will then be opened, and queried for its parameters, then each track will be formatted, written with data from the inputfile, read back and compared. When the floppy disk is filled, the process is repeated, with the next disk. This continues until the program is interrupted or EOF is encountered on the inputfile. The options are as follows: -v Toggle verbosity on stdout. Default is ``on''. After device is opened first time the format will be printed. During operation progress will be reported with the number of tracks remaining on the current floppy disk, and the letters I, Z, F, W, R and C, which indicates completion of Input, Zero-fill, Format Write, Read and Compare of current track respec- tively. -y Do not ask for presence of a floppy disk in the drive. This non-interactive flag is useful for shell scripts. -f inputfile Input file to read. If none is given, stdin is assumed. -d device The name of the floppy device to write to. Default is /dev/fd0. The fdwrite utility actually closes the device while it waits for the user to press return, it is thus quite possible to use the drive for other purposes at this time and later resume writing with the next floppy. The parameters returned from device are used for formatting. If custom formatting is needed, please use fdformat(1) instead. EXAMPLES
The fdwrite utility was planned as a tool to make life easier when writing a set of floppies, one such use could be to write a tar-archive: tar cf -. | gzip -9 | fdwrite -d /dev/fd0.1720 -v The main difference from using tar(1)'s multivolume facility is of course the formatting of the floppies, which here is done on the fly, thus reducing the amount of work for the floppy-jockey. SEE ALSO
fdformat(1) HISTORY
The fdwrite utility was written while waiting for ``make world'' to complete. Some of the code was taken from fdformat(1). AUTHORS
The program has been contributed by Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>. BUGS
Diagnostics are less than complete at present. If a floppy is sick, and the inputfile is seekable, it should ask the user to frisbee the disk, insert another, and rewind to the right spot and continue. This concept could be extended to cover non-seekable input also by employing a temporary file. An option (defaulting to zero) should allow the user to ask for retries in case of failure. At present a suitable tool for reading back a multivolume set of floppies is missing. Programs like tar(1) for instance, will do the job, if the data has not been compressed. One can always trust dd(1) to help out in this situation of course. BSD
September 16, 1993 BSD
Check Out this Related Man Page
ARFF(8) System Manager's Manual ARFF(8) NAME
arff, flcopy - archiver and copier for floppy SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/arff [ key ] [ name ... ] /usr/sbin/flcopy [ -h ] [ -tn ] DESCRIPTION
Arff saves and restores files on VAX console media (the console floppy on the VAX 11/780 and 785, the cassette on the 11/730, and the con- sole RL02 on the 8600/8650). Its actions are controlled by the key argument. The key is a string of characters containing at most one function letter and possibly one or more function modifiers. Other arguments to the command are file names specifying which files are to be dumped or restored. The default options are correct for the RX01 floppy on the 780; for other console media, the f and m flags are required. Files names have restrictions, because of radix50 considerations. They must be in the form 1-6 alphanumerics followed by "." followed by 0-3 alphanumerics. Case distinctions are lost. Only the trailing component of a pathname is used. The function portion of the key is specified by one of the following letters: r The named files are replaced where found on the floppy, or added taking up the minimal possible portion of the first empty spot on the floppy. x The named files are extracted from the floppy. d The named files are deleted from the floppy. Arff will combine contiguous deleted files into one empty entry in the rt-11 direc- tory. t The names of the specified files are listed each time they occur on the floppy. If no file argument is given, all of the names on the floppy are listed. The following characters may be used in addition to the letter which selects the function desired. v The v (verbose) option, when used with the t function gives more information about the floppy entries than just the name. f causes arff to use the next argument as the name of the archive instead of /dev/floppy. m causes arff not to use the mapping algorithm employed in interleaving sectors around a floppy disk. In conjunction with the f option it may be used for extracting files from rt11 formatted cartridge disks, for example. It may also be used to speed up reading from and writing to rx02 floppy disks, by using the `c' device instead of the `b' device. It must be used with TU58 or RL02 media. c causes arff to create a new directory on the floppy, effectively deleting all previously existing files. Flcopy copies the console floppy disk (opened as `/dev/floppy') to a file created in the current directory, named "floppy", then prints the message "Change Floppy, hit return when done". Then flcopy copies the local file back out to the floppy disk. The -h option to flcopy causes it to open a file named "floppy" in the current directory and copy it to /dev/floppy; the -t option causes only the first n tracks to participate in a copy. FILES
/dev/floppy or /dev/rrx?? floppy (in current directory) SEE ALSO
crl(4), fl(4), rx(4), tu(4), rxformat(8) AUTHORS
Keith Sklower, Richard Tuck BUGS
Device errors are handled ungracefully. 4th Berkeley Distribution November 16, 1996 ARFF(8)