Attempting to format a vfat floppy using kfloppy. Settings in KFloppy >>> Floppy Drive: Primary Size: 3.5" 1.44MB File System: DOS SWITCHES::: Full format, Verify Integrity were switched on Volume Label was switched on and was "KDE floppy" during the verification phase, KFloppy aborts with the following message: Cannot format: /dev/fd0u1440 Problem reading cylinder 79, expected 18432, read 10240 KFloppy also aborted with a similar error when I tried to format the floppy usin g ext2. Although I have floppy usually mounted as supermount, I dont think this should make a difference as I unmounted the supermounted drive manually before trying to run kfloppy Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.obtain a partially corrupt floppy 2.make sure the floppy is not mounted 3.try and format it using kfloppy Actual Results: Kfloppy aborted with an error. Expected Results: It should have marked the bad portions of the floppy as such and successfully formatted the floppy. /etc/fstab: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.10 2002/11/18 19: 39:22 azarah Exp $ /dev/hda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 1 /dev/hda9 / ext3 noatime,data=journal 0 1 /dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hda6 /var/tmp/portage reiserfs noatime,notail 0 0 /dev/hda7 /Documents ext3 defaults,atime, data=journal 0 0 /dev/hda8 /home ext3 noatime,data=journal 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /floppy /floppy supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/fd0,--,users,sync,noatime 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 Portage 2.0.47-r10 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.2, glibc-2.3.2-r1) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-ck4 i686 Celeron (Coppermine) GENTOO_MIRRORS=" http://ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/gentoo// ftp://ftp.easynet. nl/mirror/gentoo// ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://ftp.belnet. be/mirror/rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo/" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" USE="x86 oss apm encode libg++ libwww mikmod xml2 gdbm berkdb slang readline arts bonobo ggi tcltk guile sdl gpm tcpd perl python esd qt motif -nls acpi mozsvg mozcalendar mozaccess mozinterfaceinfo mozp3p mozxmlterm moznoirc moznomail alsa avi crypt cups dga gif gnome gtk2 gtk gtkhtml imap imlib java jikes jpeg kde lcms ldap maildir mmx mozilla mpeg ncurses oav oggvorbis opengl pam pdflib png quicktime samba spell sse ssl svga tiff truetype wmf X xmms xv zlib -usb -3dnow -aalib -canna -cdr -cjk -dvd -doc -gphoto2" COMPILER="gcc3" CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium2 -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium2 -pipe" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" MAKEOPTS="-j2" AUTOCLEAN="yes" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" FEATURES="sandbox ccache" /etc/mtab: /dev/root / ext3 rw,noatime 0 0 none /dev devfs rw 0 0 proc /proc proc rw 0 0 /dev/hda6 /var/tmp/portage reiserfs rw,noatime,notail 0 0 /dev/hda7 /Documents ext3 rw,data=journal 0 0 /dev/hda8 /home ext3 rw,noatime,data=journal 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
The problem persists when I'm using a vanillla 2.4.20 kernel ... so this is not something localised to CK4 or because i'm using supermount *phew* hopefully someone out there can confirm this bug... Aniruddha Shankar Bangalore, India
The problem is also present when using gfloppy, Gnome's floppy formatter. I'm ccing the gnome team on this as well (apologies if this is the inappropriate thing to do) Aniruddha Shankar Bangalore, India
floppy is only a frontend, in this case for fdformat. The error message comes straight from fdformat and there's nothing we can do on the kfloppy side; this is not a kfloppy bug. This is the true extent of fdformat's capabilities and if I understand correctly the diskette cannot be used. (Can you make it usable with some means other than kfloppy?) The kfloppy interface and help is perhaps a little misleading if you don't know what's underneath and what it is capable of. But, there's nothing we can do about it.
I thought as much because I get the same weird errors when using fdformat. However, there is a way to format the floppy successfully : 1. umount the floppy 2. mformat a: 3. dosfsck -waft /dev/fd0 this results in a floppy that can be used with confidence as the bad sectors are marked as such by dosfsck. To preclude the possibility that this is an error that is unique in some manner to my hardware / software configuration, could you please see if you could duplicate this bug (despite the fact that it's not, strictly speaking, a KDE bug) ? Assuming you can (and I have no reason to think that you will not be able to, as I have seen this bug arise in all versions of Gentoo from 1.1 to 1.4rc4) I would submit that this is a cause for concern in re KDE/Gnome as many newbies (especially in the third world where bad quality floppies are widely used) will encounter this bug. If I were to prepare a detailed bugreport, could you please submit that upstream to the maintainer of fdformat ? I'm asking because in my experience maintainers of packages pay more attention to bugreports from XXX@gentoo.org as opposed to randomuser@somplace.com Thanks a lot, Aniruddha Shankar Bangalore, India
Well, as it happens, I use a laptop that has no builtin floppy drive, and have no floppies around. So I'm reopening this bugreport and giving it to the bug-wranglers again, who will assign it to whoever is responsible for fdformat. brain@gentoo.org has already verified this - he produed the same error by scratching a floppy on purpose and running fdformat. (Though it may not always be as easy to reproduce, because 'scratching a floppy' in't a very precise operation...)
sorry, not a gentoo bug if you like, submit a official bug. this is where you can report only gentoo bug
