Storage on Floppy

John Wildberger wildberger-iRg7kjdsKiH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org
Tue Apr 13 11:11:49 UTC 2004


The storage of files on floppies in Linux is different than in the "other" OS.
Say, you have 20 files in a directory, where each file is 400kb long. Now you 
copy the  directory to a floppy by  " cp * /mnt/floppy" . Then you umount the 
floppy and subsequently mount it again. Next check what you have on the 
floppy with "ls". It will list all the 20 files, but actually only 3 and a 
half files are on the floppy. If the files happen to be picture files with 
the .jpg or .png extension you will be able to display the last incomplete 
file as a partial picture. I hate to see what happens when the last 
incomplete file happens to be an executable file. Chances are that the 
computer will hang or the program will end in the neverland region of memory.
There is no checking during storage if there is enough space left to store the 
last  file in its entirety.
Also the listing of the complete directory with all the 20 files can be very 
confusing. You might try to execute the sixth file in the list, only to get 
an error message.
John
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