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how to erase files on floppy?

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dans45

Technical User
Feb 13, 2003
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Hi , Basic question.
Created mount point /mnt/floppy
Mounted floppy
Copied files to another directory.
Unmounted floppy
Formatted floppy on another machine.
Mounted floppy again.
Same files still on floppy according to Linux. Cannot erase due to "read only". Cannot change permissions to anything but what they are set to. As root it appears I can do anything but if I try to rm the response is "read only"
I removed floppy and recreated mount point and made sure it was 777 permission. Then remounted diskette but same problem persists. How can I clean off the diskette from Linux OS perspective?
Using fedora distribution.
Sorry if question seems trivial but for me it is not.
Thanks much.


 
This is only a guess but I think linux didn't notice that the floppy was changed. It has a record of the old floppy and is reading that. Can you put another floppy in to see if it thinks it's the same one?
 
Thanks theDaver but it is not write protected. I will try RhythmAce's recommendation Monday. Perhaps another diskette will do it. I didn't know diskettes when reformatted would have any data to identify them on it. I will try anyway.
 
Hone in on your mount command. What are the options? Has the command been aliased? Is there an entry in mtab or fstab you haven't noticed (happened to me once, the distro set the ro option for floppies by default)?

Cheers,
ND [smile]
 
Have you tried mounting the floppy then issuing the [tt]eject[/tt] command against it?

Have you tried mounting then dismounting a different floppy then mounting the one in question?

I'm wondering if the disk cache for the floppy simply won't flush, so you're seeing the cached data. Maybe [tt]eject[/tt] will convince the caching mechanism to expire the cache or maybe reading the other disk will overwrite the cache.



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I agree with sleipnir214 that you may be confusing your action of physically changing the floppy with the process to let the OS know that the floppy was changed. Odd results will certainly occur.

'eject' or 'unmount' will probably help. Also, if you're running 'autofs' I would think this gets managed better by the system. Redhat derived systems tend to have autofs on by default - if that helps. dunno what distro you're using.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting
 
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