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1 perry 1 superformat
2 !!!superformat
3 Name
4 Note
5 Description
6 Common Options
7 Advanced Options
8 Sector skewing options
9 Examples
10 Troubleshooting
11 Bugs
12 See Also
13 ----
14 !!Name
15
16
17 superformat - format floppies
18 !!Note
19
20
21 This manpage has been automatically generated from fdutils's
22 texinfo documentation. However, this process is only
23 approximative, and some items, such as crossreferences,
24 footnotes and indices are lost in this translation process.
25 Indeed, these items have no appropriate representation in
26 the manpage format. Moreover, only the items specific to
27 each command have been translated, and the general
28 information about fdutils has been dropped in the manpage
29 version. Thus I strongly advise you to use the original
30 texinfo doc.
31
32
33 *
34
35
36 To generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the
37 following commands:
38
39
40 __ ./configure; make dvi; dvips fdutils.dvi
41 __
42
43
44 *
45
46
47 To generate a html copy, run:
48
49
50 __ ./configure; make html
51 __A premade html can be found at: `http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/fdutils'
52
53
54 *
55
56
57 To generate an info copy (browsable using emacs' info mode),
58 run:
59
60
61 __ ./configure; make info
62 __
63
64
65 The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as html.
66 Indeed, in the info version certain examples are difficult
67 to read due to the quoting conventions used in
68 info.
69 !!Description
70
71
72 superformat [[-D ''dos-drive''] [[-v ''verbosity-level''] [[-b ''begin-track''
73
74
75 ]
76 [[-e ''end-track''
77
78
79 ] [[--superverify] [[--dosverify]
80 [[--noverify] [[--verify_later]
81 [[-G ''format-gap''] [[-F ''final-gap''] [[-i ''interleave''] [[-c ''chunksize''
82
83
84 ]
85 [[-g ''gap''] [[--absolute-skew ''absolute-skew''] [[--head-skew ''head-skew''
86
87
88 ]
89 [[--track-skew ''track-skew''] [[--biggest-last] ''drive'' [[''media-description''
90
91
92 ]
93
94
95 superformat is used to format disks with a capacity of up to
96 1992K HD or 3984K ED. See section Extended formats for a
97 detailed description of these formats. See section Media
98 description for a detailed description of the syntax for the
99 media description. If no media description is given,
100 superformat formats a disk in the highest available density
101 for that drive, using standard parameters (i.e. no extra
102 capacity formats).
103
104
105 When the disk is formatted, superformat
106 automatically invokes mformat in order to put an
107 MS-DOS filesystem on it. You may ignore this filesystem, if
108 you don't need it.
109
110
111 Supeformat allows to format 2m formats. Be aware, however,
112 that these 2m formats were specifically designed to
113 hold an MS-DOS filesystem, and that they take advantage of
114 the fact that the MS-DOS filesystem uses redundant sectors
115 on the first track (the FAT, which is represented twice).
116 The second copy of the FAT is ''not'' represented on the
117 disk.
118
119
120 High capacity formats are sensitive to the exact rotation
121 speed of the drive and the resulting difference in raw
122 capacity. That's why superformat performs a
123 measurement of the disks raw capacity before proceeding with
124 the formatting. This measurement is rather time consuming,
125 and can be avoided by storing the relative deviation of the
126 drive capacity into the drive definition file file. See
127 section Drive descriptions for more details on this file.
128 The line to be inserted into the drive definition file is
129 printed by superformat after performing its measurement.
130 However, this line depends on the drive and the controller.
131 Do not copy it to other computers. Remove it before
132 installing another drive or upgrade your floppy controller.
133 Swap the drive numbers if you swap the drives in your
134 computer.
135 !!Common Options
136
137
138 Many options have a long and a short form.
139
140
141 -h
142
143
144 --help
145
146
147 Print the help.
148
149
150 -D ''drive''
151
152
153 --dosdrive ''dos-drive''
154
155
156 Selects DOS drive letter for mformat (for example
157 a: or b:). The colon may be omitted. The
158 default is derived from the minor device number. If the
159 drive letter cannot be guessed, and is not given on the
160 command line, mformat is skipped.
161
162
163 -v ''verbosity-level''
164
165
166 --verbosity ''verbosity-level''
167
168
169 Sets the verbosity level. 1 prints a dot for each formatted
170 track. 2 prints a changing sign for each formatted track (-
171 for formatting the first head, = for formatting the second
172 head, x for verifying the first head, and + for verifying
173 the second head). 3 prints a complete line listing head and
174 track. 6 and 9 print debugging information.
175
176
177 --superverify
178
179
180 Verifies the disk by first reading the track, than writing a
181 pattern of U's, and then reading it again. This is useful as
182 some errors only show up after the disk has once been
183 written. However, this is also slower.
184
185
186 -B
187
188
189 --dosverify
190
191
192 Verifies the disk using the mbadblocks program.
193 mbadblocks marks the bad sectors as bad in the FAT.
194 The advantage of this is that disks which are only partially
195 bad can still be used for MS-DOS filesystems.
196
197
198 -V
199
200
201 --verify_later
202
203
204 Verifies the whole disk at the end of the formatting process
205 instead of at each track. Verifying the disk at each track
206 has the advantage of detecting errors early on.
207
208
209 -f
210
211
212 --noverify
213
214
215 Skips the verification altogether.
216 !!Advanced Options
217
218
219 Usually, superformat uses sensible default values for these
220 options, which you normally don't need to override. They are
221 intended for expert users. Most of them should only be
222 needed in cases where the hardware or superformat itself has
223 bugs.
224
225
226 -b ''begin-track''
227
228
229 --begin_track ''begin-track''
230
231
232 Describes the track where to begin formatting. This is
233 useful if the previous formatting failed halfway through.
234 The default is 0.
235
236
237 -e ''end-track''
238
239
240 --end_track ''end-track''
241
242
243 Describes where to stop formatting. ''end_track'' is the
244 last track to be formatted plus one. This is mainly useful
245 for testing purposes. By default, this is the same as the
246 total number of tracks. When the formatting stops, the final
247 skew is displayed (to be used as absolute skew when you'll
248 continue).
249
250
251 -S ''sizecode''
252
253
254 --sizecode ''sizecode''
255
256
257 Set the sector size to be used. The sector size is 128 * (2
258 ^ ''sizecode''). Sector sizes below 512 bytes are not
259 supported, thus sizecode must be at least 2. By default 512
260 is assumed, unless you ask for more sectors than would fit
261 with 512 bytes.
262
263
264 --stretch ''stretch''
265
266
267 Set the stretch factor. The stretch factor describes how
268 many physical tracks to skip to get to the next logical
269 track (2 ^ ''stretch''). On double density 5 1/4 disks,
270 the tracks are further apart from each other.
271
272
273 -G ''fmt-gap''
274
275
276 --format_gap ''fmt-gap''
277
278
279 Set the formatting gap. The formatting gap tells how far the
280 sectors are away from each other. By default, this is chosen
281 so as to evenly distribute the sectors along the
282 track.
283
284
285 -F ''final-gap''
286
287
288 --final_gap ''final-gap''
289
290
291 Set the formatting gap to be used after the last
292 sector.
293
294
295 -i ''interleave''
296
297
298 --interleave ''interleave''
299
300
301 Set the sector interleave factor.
302
303
304 -c ''chunksize''
305
306
307 --chunksize ''chunksize''
308
309
310 Set the size of the chunks. The chunks are small auxiliary
311 sectors used during formatting. They are used to handle
312 heterogeneous sector sizes (i.e. not all sectors have the
313 same size) and negative formatting gaps.
314
315
316 --biggest-last
317
318
319 For MSS formats, make sure that the biggest sector is last
320 on the track. This makes the format more reliable on drives
321 which are out of spec.
322 !!Sector skewing options
323
324
325 In order to maximize the user data transfer rate, the
326 sectors are arranged in such a way that sector 1 of the new
327 track/head comes under the head at the very moment when the
328 drive is ready to read from that track, after having read
329 the previous track. Thus the first sector of the second
330 track is not necessarily near the first sector of the first
331 track. The skew value describes for each track how far
332 sector number 1 is away from the index mark. This skew value
333 changes for each head and track. The amount of this change
334 depends on how fast the disk spins, and on how much time is
335 needed to change the head or the track.
336
337
338 --absolute_skew ''absolute-skew''
339
340
341 Set the absolute skew. (The skew value used for the first
342 formatted track)
343
344
345 --head_skew ''head-skew''
346
347
348 Set the head skew. (The skew added for passing from head 0
349 to head 1)
350
351
352 --track_skew ''track-skew''
353
354
355 Set the track skew. (The skew added for seeking to the next
356 track)
357
358
359 Example: (absolute skew=3, head skew=1, track
360 skew=2)
361
362
363 __ track 0 head 0: 4,5,6,1,2,3 (skew=3)
364 track 0 head 1: 3,4,5,6,1,2 (skew=4)
365 track 1 head 0: 1,2,3,4,5,6 (skew=0)
366 track 1 head 1: 6,1,2,3,4,5 (skew=1)
367 track 2 head 0: 4,5,6,1,2,3 (skew=3)
368 track 2 head 1: 3,4,5,6,1,2 (skew=4)
369 __
370 !!Examples
371
372
373 In all the examples of this section, we assume that drive 0
374 is a 3 1/2 and drive 1 a 5 1/4.
375
376
377 The following example shows how to format a 1440K disk in
378 drive 0:
379
380
381 __ superformat /dev/fd0 hd
382 __
383
384
385 The following example shows how to format a 1200K disk in
386 drive 1:
387
388
389 __ superformat /dev/fd1 hd
390 __
391
392
393 The following example shows how to format a 1440K disk in
394 drive 1:
395
396
397 __ superformat /dev/fd1 hd sect=18
398 __
399
400
401 The following example shows how to format a 720K disk in
402 drive 0:
403
404
405 __ superformat /dev/fd0 dd
406 __
407
408
409 The following example shows how to format a 1743K disk in
410 drive 0 (83 cylinders times 21 sectors):
411
412
413 __ superformat /dev/fd0 sect=21 cyl=83
414 __
415
416
417 The following example shows how to format a 1992K disk in
418 drive 0 (83 cylinders times 2 heads times 12 KB per
419 track)
420
421
422 __ superformat /dev/fd0 tracksize=12KB cyl=83 mss
423 __
424
425
426 The following example shows how to format a 1840K disk in
427 drive 0. It will have 5 2048-byte sectors, one 1024-byte
428 sector, and one 512-byte sector per track:
429
430
431 __ superformat /dev/fd0 tracksize=23b mss 2m ssize=2KB
432 __
433
434
435 All these formats can be autodetected by mtools, using the
436 floppy driver's default settings.
437 !!Troubleshooting
438
439
440 FDC busy, sleeping for a second
441
442
443 When another program accesses a disk drive on the same
444 controller as the one being formatted, superformat
445 has to wait until the other access is finished. If this
446 happens, check whether any other program accesses a drive
447 (or whether a drive is mounted), kill that program (or
448 unmount the drive), and the format should proceed
449 normally.
450
451
452 I/O errors during verification
453
454
455 Your drive may be too far out of tolerance, and you may thus
456 need to supply a margin parameter. Run floppymeter
457 (see section floppymeter) to find out an appropriate value
458 for this parameter, and add the suggested margin
459 parameter to the command line
460 !!Bugs
461
462
463 Opening up new window while superformat is running
464 produces overrun errors. These errors are benign, as the
465 failed operation is automatically retried until it
466 succeeds.
467 !!See Also
468
469
470 Fdutils' texinfo doc
471 ----
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