Re: LS-120 Formatting?

Jon Hamilton (hamilton@pobox.com)
Sun, 20 Dec 1998 12:03:34 -0600

In message <Pine.LNX.3.96.981220171141.32110I-100000@ps.cus.umist.ac.uk>, Riley
Williams wrote:
} Hi there.
}
} >>>> mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdb
}
} >>>> works just fine, formats to 120 MB or 1.44 depending on media.
}
} >>> No. NOT FORMATS. Just make filesystem. What you'll do when you'll
} >>> have new 1.44 floppy NOT formatted (LOW-LEVEL formatted, that
} >>> is!!!) ? mkfs.ext2 will just say: "could not write" or something
}
} >> Why would it do something stupid like that?
}
} > Since it was designed this way :-)
}
} Then the design is flawed...

No, it's not. Its behavior should be consistent, and the only sensible
way to do that is to have it make the filesystem and not format the media.
I'm sure you'd be somewhat miffed if you used mke2fs to build a filesystem
on /dev/sd0e and it decided to format the whole drive, wiping out the
rest of your partitions!

} >> All I know is, I buy my 1.44 floppies unformatted (as they're
} >> cheaper that way),
}
} > They are still low-level formatted, just not tested.
}
} Really ???

Yes, really.

[ ... ]

} > PS. May be you have specially modified mkfs.ext2 which could do
} > low-level format but standard mkfs.ext2 will do just it: create
} > ext2fs filesystem on low-level formatted driver.
}
} If I do, then RedHat have been supplying a patched version since at
} least RedHat 4.1 when I started with Linux - I've been doing the above
} since then...

You've been making filesystems on already formatted media, nothing more.

-- 
   Jon Hamilton  
   hamilton@pobox.com




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