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Bug 3350 - Garbled DOS floppy listings ( 9.4 GB in all !!! ) which also cause problems in KDE 3
Summary: Garbled DOS floppy listings ( 9.4 GB in all !!! ) which also cause problems i...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Linux
Classification: Unclassified
Component: [OLD] Unspecified (show other bugs)
Hardware: All Linux
: High major (vote)
Assignee: Doug Goldstein (RETIRED)
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2002-06-03 07:43 UTC by Aniruddha Shankar
Modified: 2003-01-28 00:30 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


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Description Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-03 07:43:09 UTC
bash-2.05a$ mount
/dev/hda6 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /dev type devfs (rw)
tmpfs on /mnt/.init.d type tmpfs (rw,mode=0644,size=1024k)
/dev/hda3 on /var type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=journal)
/dev/hda5 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=journal)
/dev/fd0 on /floppy type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
bash-2.05a$ ls -lh /floppy
total 225K
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         30K Jun  8  2002 ASP.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         19K Jun  2 11:51 Lawnsoc.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         38K May 25 19:02 Memorial 
Scoresheet.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         36K May 25 19:01 Oral Score Sheet.doc
drwxr-xr-x    3 student  wheel        1.0K May  9 19:49 PD Asians
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         26K Jun  8  2002 facadv.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         11K May 30 16:53 mesg.mail
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         46K May 25 19:01 objectives.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel         16K May 30 11:48 rohit.doc
bash-2.05a$ ls -lh /floppy/PD\ Asians/
total 1.0K
drwxr-xr-x    6 student  wheel        1.0K May  9 13:40 Dont Print
bash-2.05a$ ls -lh /floppy/PD\ Asians/Dont\ Print/
total 9.4G <===== HUH????
dr-xr-xr-x    0 student  wheel         512 Nov 19  2032  sir owe.n s
dr-xr-xr-x    0 student  wheel         512 Mar 14  1996 ant toda.y a
-r-xr-xr-x    1 student  wheel        742M Mar  5  1996 dition t.o b
-r-xr-xr-x    1 student  wheel        1.6G Mar 25 14:19 doption.by
-r-xr-xr-x    1 student  wheel        1.6G Aug 31  2028 ia is of. sp
-r-xr-xr-x    1 student  wheel        1.8G Nov  9  2035 lly. it.is
-r-xr-xr-x    1 student  wheel        1.8G Mar 14  2030 n in ter.ms
-rwxr-xr-x    1 student  wheel        1.6G Nov  1  2037 the stat.e o
bash-2.05a$ cd /
====> at this point, I also closed a konqueror window that was displaying 
/floppy
bash-2.05a$ umount /floppy
umount: /floppy: device is busy
twentyfive root # lsof | grep /floppy
kdeinit   32428 student   15r   REG        2,0 1768252012      19858 
/floppy/PD Asians/Dont Print/doption.by
kdeinit   32428 student   18r   REG        2,0 1768776801      19859 
/floppy/PD Asians/Dont Print/ia is of. sp
kdeinit   32428 student   19r   REG        2,0  778396530      19860 
/floppy/PD Asians/Dont Print/dition t.o b
kdeinit   32428 student   20r   REG        2,0 1986358373      19862 
/floppy/PD Asians/Dont Print/n in ter.ms
kdeinit   32428 student   21r   REG        2,0 1763734121      19864 
/floppy/PD Asians/Dont Print/the stat.e o
kdeinit   32428 student   22r   REG        2,0 1948280431      19865 
/floppy/PD Asians/Dont Print/lly. it.is
====> I now had to close ALL  konqueror windows, including a mail window  
before I could successfully issue the following command:
bash-2.05a$ umount /floppy
bash-2.05a$ mdir a:\pdasia~1
 Volume in drive A has no label
 Volume Serial Number is 0FD5-124A
Directory for A:/pdasia~1
.            <DIR>     05-09-2002  19:49
..           <DIR>     05-09-2002  19:49
DONTPR~1     <DIR>     05-09-2002  13:40  Dont Print
        3 files                   0 bytes
                          1 225 216 bytes free
bash-2.05a$ mdir a:\pdasia~1\dontpr~1
mdir: File "a:pdasia~1dontpr~1" not found
bash-2.05a$ uname -a
Linux twentyfive.complab 2.4.19-gentoo-r5 #2 Sat Jun 1 23:07:12 IST 2002 
i686 GenuineIntel
Comment 1 Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-03 07:49:45 UTC
More information at http://bugs.kde.org/db/41/41685.html 
Comment 2 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2002-06-03 19:48:18 UTC
since you managed to track the problem down to kde, why did you post the bug 
for gentoo ? 
also, did you try mounting the floppy on a diff linux machine to see if you got 
the same results ?  floppies are far from reliable, ever 
Comment 3 Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-04 14:14:48 UTC
kde's just the wm that some users happen to use. the problem is present in 
all environments, including a text-only one. It's just that the problem is 
aggravated when using kde.

And yes, the floppy, when mounted on another linux system (I have about 20 
identical systems here running Gentoo 1.1a) gives me the same error. The 
same floppy, when mounted on a windows machine works without errors. I have 
yet to try it on a linux machine from another distribution, but shall do so 
and report asap. 

Aniruddha Karim Shankar
Bangalore, India
Comment 4 Joachim Blaabjerg (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2002-06-19 02:52:11 UTC
Can you reproduce this with other floppies you know are OK? I've gotten an old
800MB disk to be reported as 1.19TB once, so AFAICS, this could be a physical
problem with the floppy, or a generic linux floppy support problem. The fact
that Windows can read the floppy without problems is of course a bit disturbing,
but I wouldn't use that as an insurance that the floppy is OK.
Comment 5 Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-19 14:06:11 UTC
The mysterious floppy bug (a.k.a. the drive Karim gibbering mad bug) was sighted just now. 
Present was floppy with strange files full of questionmarks and garbled files (sizes way way 
above 1.44 mb). It was taken to a Windows 2000 5.00.2195 (Service Pack 2) machine. No 
garbled characters in listing, also, no problems copying a file from the floppy. It was error 
checked with scandisk with the "automatically fix file system errors" and "scan for and 
attempt recovery of bad sectors" options checked. After scandisk, no garbled files in the listing 
under Linux, no problems mounting and unmounting at all. 

I am trying to get hold of a disk utility which will tell me more about what problems are on 
the disk. the dosfsck from dosfstools is broken, will  not check floppies for bad clusters unless 
the floppy is empty. 

cheers... 

Am unable to reproduce this error, though, to tell the truth, havent tried (and dont have the 
faintest idea how to). 
Comment 6 Seemant Kulleen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2002-06-28 12:20:59 UTC
aniruddha, what's the latest on this?
Comment 7 Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-29 02:55:51 UTC
twentyfive karim # ls -lh /floppy <=== mounted as vfat
ls: /floppy/iskette.: No such file or directory
ls: /03/98 w.yx: No such file or directory
total 251M
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root          512 Aug 14  2001 >???g???.?o?
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         104K Aug 31  2001 IPissuesinM_A.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          61K Dec 31 13:32 conver.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          71K Oct 19  2001 employee ip non competition.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 employmentissuesinM_A_s.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          86K Oct 19  2001 envpolicy1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          90K Oct 19  2001 envpolicy2.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         144K Oct 19  2001 ~WRL2787.tmp
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 ~WRL3540.tmp
-r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root          14M Jan 17 07:16 ?z?t7???.?i?
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1980 ??
dr-xr-xr-x  118 root     root          54K May 23  1982 ???z?t??.???
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root          512 Jan  2  2024 ?q?.??q
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan 19  1980 ?>?*=47).ihc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         235M Dec 20  1929 ?3????.???
twentyfive karim # umount /floppy
twentyfive karim # mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy
twentyfive karim # ls -lh /floppy
ls: /floppy/
Comment 8 Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-29 02:55:51 UTC
twentyfive karim # ls -lh /floppy <=== mounted as vfat
ls: /floppy/iskette.: No such file or directory
ls: /03/98 w.yx: No such file or directory
total 251M
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root          512 Aug 14  2001 >???g???.?o?
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         104K Aug 31  2001 IPissuesinM_A.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          61K Dec 31 13:32 conver.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          71K Oct 19  2001 employee ip non competition.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 employmentissuesinM_A_s.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          86K Oct 19  2001 envpolicy1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          90K Oct 19  2001 envpolicy2.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         144K Oct 19  2001 ~WRL2787.tmp
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 ~WRL3540.tmp
-r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root          14M Jan 17 07:16 ?z?t7???.?i?
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1980 ??
dr-xr-xr-x  118 root     root          54K May 23  1982 ???z?t??.???
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root          512 Jan  2  2024 ?q?.??q
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan 19  1980 ?>?*=47).ihc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         235M Dec 20  1929 ?3????.???
twentyfive karim # umount /floppy
twentyfive karim # mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy
twentyfive karim # ls -lh /floppy
ls: /floppy/ë>*=47).ihc: No such file or directory
ls: /floppy/ú3Àм.Ø: No such file or directory
ls: /floppy/»: No such file or directory
ls: /floppy/iskette.: No such file or directory
[clipped for brevity, mounting as msdos instead of vfat still shows errors]
twentyfive karim # umount /floppy
twentyfive karim # mdir a: <=== strangely enough, this works fine. 
Volume in drive A has no label
Directory for A:/

EMPLOY~2 DOC     73216 10-19-2001  10:00  employee ip non competition.doc
IPISSU~1 DOC    106496 08-31-2001  19:26  IPissuesinM_A.doc
ENVPOL~1 DOC     88576 10-19-2001  10:01  envpolicy1.doc
ENVPOL~2 DOC     92672 10-19-2001  10:01  envpolicy2.doc
EMPLOY~1 DOC    112128 10-19-2001  10:01  employmentissuesinM_A_s.doc
conver   doc     62464 12-31-2001  13:32 
        6 files             535 552 bytes
                            662 528 bytes free

At this stage, I created a raw copy of the disk using 
twentyfive karim # dd if=/dev/fd0 of=culprit 
I ddd this image onto a new floppy and verified that the errors in the listings appeared when 
mounted in vfat and msdos mode. As before, mtools' mdir was able to read the floppy 
perfectly. 

This image of the floppy has been uploaded at https://mail.nls.ac.in/floppymadness/ along 
with it's md5.
Dosfsck from dosfstools was able to rectify the errors on the floppy, the output is shown 
below: 
twentyfive karim # dosfsck -waft /dev/fd0 <==== log of this is at 
https://mail.nls.ac.in/floppymadness/dosfsck.log
dosfsck 2.8, 28 Feb 2001, FAT32, LFN
/ë>\220*=47).IHC
  Bad file name.
  Auto-renaming it.
  Renamed to FSCK0000.REN
[clipped for brevity]
Performing changes.
/dev/fd0: 22 files, 1553/2847 clusters 
twentyfive karim # mount /floppy
twentyfive karim # ls -lh /floppy
total 777K
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         104K Aug 31  2001 IPissuesinM_A.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          61K Dec 31 13:32 conver.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          71K Oct 19  2001 employee ip non competition.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 employmentissuesinM_A_s.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          86K Oct 19  2001 envpolicy1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          90K Oct 19  2001 envpolicy2.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan 19  1980 fsck0000.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 20  1929 fsck0001.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1980 fsck0002.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 Mar 20  1996 fsck0003.ren
-r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan 17 07:16 fsck0004.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 Jan  2  2024 fsck0005.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 Aug 14  2001 fsck0006.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 May 23  1982 fsck0007.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1980 fsck0008.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         144K Oct 19  2001 ~WRL2787.tmp
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 ~WRL3540.tmp
twentyfive karim # umount /floppy
twentyfive karim # mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy
twentyfive karim # ls -lh /floppy
total 777K
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          61K Dec 31 13:32 conver.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 employ~1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          71K Oct 19  2001 employ~2.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          86K Oct 19  2001 envpol~1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          90K Oct 19  2001 envpol~2.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan 19  1980 fsck0000.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Dec 20  1929 fsck0001.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1980 fsck0002.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 Mar 20  1996 fsck0003.ren
-r-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan 17 07:16 fsck0004.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 Jan  2  2024 fsck0005.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 Aug 14  2001 fsck0006.ren
dr-xr-xr-x    0 root     root            0 May 23  1982 fsck0007.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1  1980 fsck0008.ren
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         104K Aug 31  2001 ipissu~1.doc
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         144K Oct 19  2001 ~wrl2787.tmp
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         109K Oct 19  2001 ~wrl3540.tmp

Please dd the image onto your floppies and check them to your hearts' content. I do not have 
access to any system not running 2.4.19-gentoo-r7 and would be grateful if someone were to 
check if this error appears with different kernels. 

regards, 

Aniruddha Shankar
Bangalore, India
Comment 9 Seemant Kulleen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2002-06-29 03:24:05 UTC
looks like dosfsck worked then?
Comment 10 Aniruddha Shankar 2002-06-29 09:22:06 UTC
If dosfsck worked reliably then I wouldnt really have a problem. It doesnt, however. If there is a 
file on the floppy which is on an area of the disk that has a bad block, dosfsck aborts without 
fixing the error or any errors on subsequent files. mbadblocks aborts without marking any 
blocks as bad as well.

I'll post logs of this if anyone needs it. 

thanks a million, people... 

Aniruddha Shankar
Bangalore, India
Comment 11 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2002-09-05 14:48:00 UTC
ive seen this kind of thing before using vfat on regular drives (not gentoo 
specific)

basically it means that vfat support isnt perfect and as such bugs in the kern 
probably need to be ironed out (which means i'm closing this bug)