Running linux with kernel 2.6.3* (2.6.32-rc6, for example) on a couple
of i386 boxes and an amd64 box, I cannot format floppies or do any low
level operations like dd direct to /dev/fd0.
I can read and write to floppies already containing file systems.
This is on debian testing, although I doubt if that is relevant.
I can format floppies under a 2.4.* kernel on an old i386 running an
ancient redhat release.
I have found no similar reports of such problems, but perhaps not many
people still use floppies.
fdformat (I realize that is not part of fdutils), gfloppy (ditto) and
superformat all fail. (Once gfloppy seemed to have succeeded, but I was
not able to replicate that success.) CRC errors are logged to
/var/log/messages.
More details including strace on superformat are here:-
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=548434
Can anyone help or suggest how to investigate further?
Can people here format floppies under 2.6.3* kernels?
Thanks in advance for any help,
ael
