Re: determine diskette the filesystem

Fdisk is for fixed disks.  Hard disks.

The disklabel in question would be on a Hard disk.

You can put a volume label on a floppy I think, but it would still NOT
be a label in the sense that fdisk is talking about.  You would add that
label with the -i option of mkdosfs if you made a DOS filesystem, or with
-L of mke2fs if you made an ext2fs, but that label is not what fdisk is
talking about, fdisk is talking about something that SHOULD NOT be
written to a floppy.  DO NOT write to a floppy with fdisk.  Putting
a partition table on a floppy is ridiculous.  Just format the floppy
with mkdosfs or mke2fs or mkfs.minix.  Fdisk is for HARD DISKS.  There
is no good reason to use the fdisk program on a floppy diskette.  Except
maybe it is convenient to find the number of sectors :) but it is not
something to use on a floppy.  Fdisk SHOULD NOT find one of those disk
labels on a floppy.  What fdisk is looking for is NOT the same as the
volume label of a filesystem (which you can add when making a filesystem).

The disklabel that fdisk is talking about applies to NON-DOS partitions,
such as BSD or Sun partitions.  I think the message from fdisk is misleading,
it should be worded "... neither a valid DOS PARTITION TABLE nor Sun, SGI, or
OSF DISK LABEL".


-Tom

On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Piet van Unen wrote:

> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 22:59:44 +0100
> From: Piet van Unen <[email protected]>
> To: Tom Oehser <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [tomsrtbt] determine diskette the  filesystem
>
> Dear Tom and Stephen,
>
> Thank you for help and the clear explanations. I solved my diskette problem
> and meanwhile I learned about fdisk.
>
> Fdisk /dev/fd0        gives:
> Device contains neither a valid Dos label nor Sun, SGI or OSF disk label.
> Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory, only until you
> dicide to write them. After that, of course, the previous content will won't
> be recoverable.
>
> Command (m for help): p
> Disk /dev/fd0: 2 heads 9 sectors 80 cylinders.
>
> I understant that it is a 720k floppy. It mount with
>
> mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /fl
>
>
> But what is that disklabel?
>   I cannot find a function in the help to write a label to the disk.
>
> --Piet
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tom Oehser" <[email protected]>
> To: "Piet van Unen" <[email protected]>
> Cc: "tom" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 2:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [tomsrtbt] determine diskette the filesystem
>
>
> >
> > fdisk stands for "Fixed Disk".  As in "Hard Disk".
> >
> > It is not for floppies.
> >
> > fdisk has to do with the partitioning, and even though it
> > has a byte per partition that can HINT at the filesystem
> > type, it does not really determine that filesystem type.
> >
> > I dunno what filesystem the synthesizer used, but fdisk
> > will not help.  Did the mount command mount it successfully?
> >
> > You can see what is mounted with "cat /proc/mounts".
> >
> > -Tom
> >
> > On Wed, 1 Jan 2003, Piet van Unen wrote:
> >
> > > Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 22:19:16 +0100
> > > From: Piet van Unen <[email protected]>
> > > To: tom <[email protected]>
> > > Subject: [tomsrtbt] determine diskette the  filesystem
> > >
> > > Dear Tom,
> > >
> > > I have a diskette made by a music syntheziser keyboard. I mouted it
> with:
> > >         mount  /dev/fd0H1440
> > >
> > > When I do
> > >             fdisk /dev/fd0
> > > I get the message that it is not a DOS filesystem or a Sun filesystem.
> > >
> > > But when I list the possible filesystems with l in fdisk I see that
> there
> > > are  30 other filesystems.
> > > Does anyone know how to determine the file-format on the disk?
> > > Is there any application on the rtbtsystem that can do it for me?
> > >
> > > Best wishes for 2003 for you and your family
> > >
> > > --Piet
> > >
> >
>