1.\" 2.\" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.\" "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42): 4.\" <phk@FreeBSD.org> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you 5.\" can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think 6.\" this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Poul-Henning Kamp 7.\" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.\" 9.\" 10.Dd September 16, 1993 11.Dt FDWRITE 1 12.Os 13.Sh NAME 14.Nm fdwrite 15.Nd format and write floppy disks 16.Sh SYNOPSIS 17.Nm 18.Op Fl v 19.Op Fl y 20.Op Fl f Ar inputfile 21.Op Fl d Ar device 22.Sh DESCRIPTION 23The 24.Nm 25utility formats and writes one and more floppy disks. 26Any floppy disk device capable of formatting can be used. 27.Pp 28The 29.Nm 30utility will ask the user 31(on 32.Pa /dev/tty ) 33to insert a new floppy and press return. 34The device will then be opened, and queried for its parameters, 35then each track will be formatted, written with data from the 36.Ar inputfile , 37read back and compared. 38When the floppy disk is filled, the process is repeated, with the next disk. 39This continues until the program is interrupted or EOF is encountered on the 40.Ar inputfile . 41.Pp 42The options are as follows: 43.Bl -tag -width 10n -offset indent 44.It Fl v 45Toggle verbosity on stdout. 46Default is ``on''. 47After 48.Ar device 49is opened first time the format will be printed. 50During operation progress will be reported with the number of tracks 51remaining on the current floppy disk, and the letters I, Z, F, W, 52R and C, which indicates completion of Input, Zero-fill, Format 53Write, Read and Compare of current track respectively. 54.It Fl y 55Do not ask for presence of a floppy disk in the drive. 56This non-interactive flag 57is useful for shell scripts. 58.It Fl f Ar inputfile 59Input file to read. 60If none is given, stdin is assumed. 61.It Fl d Ar device 62The name of the floppy device to write to. 63Default is 64.Pa /dev/fd0 . 65.El 66.Pp 67The 68.Nm 69utility actually closes the 70.Ar device 71while it waits for the user to press return, 72it is thus quite possible to use the drive for other purposes at this 73time and later resume writing with the next floppy. 74.Pp 75The parameters returned from 76.Ar device 77are used for formatting. 78If custom formatting is needed, please use 79.Xr fdformat 8 80instead. 81.Sh EXAMPLES 82The 83.Nm 84utility 85was planned as a tool to make life easier when writing a set of floppies, 86one such use could be to write a tar-archive: 87.Pp 88.Dl tar cf - . | gzip -9 | fdwrite -d /dev/fd0.1720 -v 89.Pp 90The main difference from using 91.Xr tar 1 Ns 's 92multivolume facility is of course the formatting of the floppies, which 93here is done on the fly, 94thus reducing the amount of work for the floppy-jockey. 95.Sh SEE ALSO 96.Xr fdformat 8 97.Sh HISTORY 98The 99.Nm 100utility was written while waiting for ``make world'' to complete. 101Some of the code was taken from 102.Xr fdformat 8 . 103.Sh AUTHORS 104The program has been contributed by 105.An Poul-Henning Kamp Aq Mt phk@FreeBSD.org . 106.Sh BUGS 107Diagnostics are less than complete at present. 108.Pp 109If a floppy is sick, and the 110.Ar inputfile 111is seekable, it should ask the user to frisbee the disk, insert 112another, and rewind to the right spot and continue. 113.Pp 114This concept could be extended to cover non-seekable input also 115by employing a temporary file. 116.Pp 117An option (defaulting to zero) should allow the user to ask for 118retries in case of failure. 119.Pp 120At present a suitable tool for reading back a multivolume set 121of floppies is missing. 122Programs like 123.Xr tar 1 124for instance, will do the job, if the data has not been compressed. 125One can always trust 126.Xr dd 1 127to help out in this situation of course. 128