Create a file and bind it to a loopback device (I was working with a
2MB file).
dd if=/dev/zero of=boot.image bs=1k count=2000
losetup /dev/loop0 boot.image
mke2fs -m 0 -i 1024 /dev/loop0
mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0 /x
Create an ext2 filesystem on a floppy disk, mount it and copy files
into it until it's nearly full.
mke2fs -m 0 -i 1024 /dev/fd0
mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt
<< copy any convenient set of files onto it >>
The operation of copying from floppy disk to the loop device causes a
total freeze with either cp -a, or two tars in a pipeline. The X
screen appeared to be still alive, but any operation causing disk
access hung.
The total amount copied before freezing varied from run to run, but at
least 650-700k appeared to be required.
Before the first crash I got some messages I'd never seen before:
Apr 14 21:14:08 deanna kernel: floppy0: Unable to allocate DMA memory
Apr 14 21:14:22 deanna last message repeated 3 times
Apr 14 21:15:25 deanna kernel: floppy0: Unable to allocate DMA memory
These did not appear when I reproduced the crash twice more.
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