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.\" $FreeBSD$ 10.\" 11.\" 12.Dd September 16, 1993 13.Dt FDWRITE 1 14.Os 15.Sh NAME 16.Nm fdwrite 17.Nd format and write floppy disks 18.Sh SYNOPSIS 19.Nm 20.Op Fl v 21.Op Fl y 22.Op Fl f Ar inputfile 23.Op Fl d Ar device 24.Sh DESCRIPTION 25The 26.Nm 27utility formats and writes one and more floppy disks. 28Any floppy disk device capable of formatting can be used. 29.Pp 30The 31.Nm 32utility will ask the user 33(on 34.Pa /dev/tty ) 35to insert a new floppy and press return. 36The device will then be opened, and queried for its parameters, 37then each track will be formatted, written with data from the 38.Ar inputfile , 39read back and compared. 40When the floppy disk is filled, the process is repeated, with the next disk. 41This continues until the program is interrupted or EOF is encountered on the 42.Ar inputfile . 43.Pp 44The options are as follows: 45.Bl -tag -width 10n -offset indent 46.It Fl v 47Toggle verbosity on stdout. 48Default is ``on''. 49After 50.Ar device 51is opened first time the format will be printed. 52During operation progress will be reported with the number of tracks 53remaining on the current floppy disk, and the letters I, Z, F, W, 54R and C, which indicates completion of Input, Zero-fill, Format 55Write, Read and Compare of current track respectively. 56.It Fl y 57Do not ask for presence of a floppy disk in the drive. 58This non-interactive flag 59is useful for shell scripts. 60.It Fl f Ar inputfile 61Input file to read. 62If none is given, stdin is assumed. 63.It Fl d Ar device 64The name of the floppy device to write to. 65Default is 66.Pa /dev/fd0 . 67.El 68.Pp 69The 70.Nm 71utility actually closes the 72.Ar device 73while it waits for the user to press return, 74it is thus quite possible to use the drive for other purposes at this 75time and later resume writing with the next floppy. 76.Pp 77The parameters returned from 78.Ar device 79are used for formatting. 80If custom formatting is needed, please use 81.Xr fdformat 1 82instead. 83.Sh EXAMPLES 84The 85.Nm 86utility 87was planned as a tool to make life easier when writing a set of floppies, 88one such use could be to write a tar-archive: 89.Pp 90.Dl tar cf - . | gzip -9 | fdwrite -d /dev/fd0.1720 -v 91.Pp 92The main difference from using 93.Xr tar 1 Ns 's 94multivolume facility is of course the formatting of the floppies, which 95here is done on the fly, 96thus reducing the amount of work for the floppy-jockey. 97.Sh SEE ALSO 98.Xr fdformat 1 99.Sh HISTORY 100The 101.Nm 102utility was written while waiting for ``make world'' to complete. 103Some of the code was taken from 104.Xr fdformat 1 . 105.Sh AUTHORS 106The program has been contributed by 107.An Poul-Henning Kamp Aq phk@FreeBSD.org . 108.Sh BUGS 109Diagnostics are less than complete at present. 110.Pp 111If a floppy is sick, and the 112.Ar inputfile 113is seekable, it should ask the user to frisbee the disk, insert 114another, and rewind to the right spot and continue. 115.Pp 116This concept could be extended to cover non-seekable input also 117by employing a temporary file. 118.Pp 119An option (defaulting to zero) should allow the user to ask for 120retries in case of failure. 121.Pp 122At present a suitable tool for reading back a multivolume set 123of floppies is missing. 124Programs like 125.Xr tar 1 126for instance, will do the job, if the data has not been compressed. 127One can always trust 128.Xr dd 1 129to help out in this situation of course. 130