On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Billy Harvey wrote:
> What is needed is a program which when called will dd the image of the
> floppy just inserted into a file, in some specified location, perhaps
> /var/floppy-`date +%s`, for example. with ownership assigned to
> whomever did the calling.
>
> Once the dd is complete, the floppy must be removed, this file is then
> mounted using loopback. Removal of the floppy will force the newbie
> to realize that the data being operated on is not physically on the
> floppy.
>
> Once the work is complete, there is a similar reverse process, which
> can check to ensure that either a blank floppy or the same floppy is
> used, that will call for the floppy to be inserted, and then will
> dd the file back to the floppy, and then call for it to be removed.
>
> The image file can then be either automatically umounted and deleted,
> or alternatively marked in some way so that if it is kept mounted and
> further written to, it will be considered dirty, annotating a need for
> a further sync to the floppy.
>
> The value of this is the usual sync and buffer ability of Linux is not
> degraded, and the forced physical removal of the floppy will also
> force a recognition of a need to later synchronize.
>
> Thoughts?
The problem is that if you have to edit a 2k file, it's going to take
five minutes as opposed to 23 seconds. Perhaps a better alternative
would be to have a feature (probably userspace would be the best place
to put it), where it could do a sort of journalling cache thingee so
that if you take out your disk during a write, your application stays
happy but your KDE/GNOME/whatever informs you that there's a problem
and that you have to reinsert your floppy for it to not be corrupted.
This is the type of thing that makes sense on a machine that is being
used by a single user, but probably shouldn't be in the kernel where
it would be ineffective for multi-user systems.
----------------------------------------------
Andrew McNabb
Argus Systems Group
amcnabb@argus-systems.com
----------------------------------------------
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