Bug 78009

Summary: USB floppy geometry incorrectly calculated
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: rehbein
Component: kernelAssignee: Arjan van de Ven <arjanv>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 8.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2004-09-30 15:40:12 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description rehbein 2002-11-17 13:08:19 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020830

Description of problem:
I have a sony vaio picturebook with RH 8.0 installed. The Sony doesn't have an
ide floppy. Rather a USB port which a usb floppy can be attached. The bios is
written to boot a floppy via the usb port. 
When the usb floppy is attached, it is recognized. However, make a boot disk
with mkbootdisk results in a floppy that will not boot. If a floppy is formatted
as DOS, written with data and then read on a DOS machine, DOS reports that the
floppy diskette is not formatted properly. It appears that the geometry of the
USB floppy is not being properly calcualted on Linux.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):2.4.18-14


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.On DOS format and write data to a floppy.
2.Inset this floppy in USB floppy connected to Linux.
3.Attempt to mount the floppy.
4.Mount reports numerous partition errors.
or
1. On Linux perform a mkbootdisk. All appears to be OK.
2. Attempt to boot diskette on VAIO. Bios fails reporting a "Boot Error".
or
1. mkfs a DOS filesystem on diskette inserted in USB floppy drive.
2. All appears OK.
3. mount the diskette and write data to it whilst still on the Linux system. All
appears OK.
4. Insert fiskette in a DOS system (dos, nt, windows, etc.). The diskette will
not mount. Diskette is reported as not properly formatted or defective.
	

Additional info:

Since unable to create and use diskette, unable to perform other tasks like
install vmware and create quest operating systems. For me this is a signficant
high priority problem that really needs to be fixed.

A possible workaround might be is I could created bootable cdroms. Where  I
could boot whatever I like.

Comment 1 Bugzilla owner 2004-09-30 15:40:12 UTC
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of
the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem
persists.

The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, 
and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in
the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/