Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 13:42:48 -0500 (EST) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: i386/15961: No keyboard import possible after floppy drive error -- a brain-damaged workaround Message-ID: <200001081842.NAA04360@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <200001081312.OAA23673@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> from Oliver Fromme at "Jan 8, 2000 02:12:21 pm"
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Oliver Fromme wrote,
[Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@nojunk.com> wrote in list.freebsd-questions:
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
> >> >Synopsis: System allows no keyboard input after floppy drive
> > error
> >> >Severity: serious
> >> >Priority: low
> >> >Responsible: freebsd-bugs
> >> >State: open
> >
> >> >Description:
> >
> >> After erroneously having mounted a write-protected floppy without -r
> >> option (i.e. read-writable), a write attempt on the floppy results in
> >> the system ignoring keyboard input (w/o any further I/O activity),
> > even
> >> Ctrl-Alt-Del (as explicitly allowed in the kernel config). The system
> >> didn't appear to hang as a whole; one could switch between the virtual
> >> consoles.
>
> I guess the submitter did the usual mistake and used the
> block device (/dev/fd*), not the raw device (/dev/rfd*).
> If that's true, I'd suggest that the PR gets closed, because
> it was just a pilot error.
I was under the impression the block device is what one uses for
'mount' commands. That's what I always see in fstab. I recently had a
user resort to rebooting a machine when he tried mounting a
write-protected floppy. I'm telling the sysadmin who gave that guy
root to mount his floppy not to give that luser root anymore. ;)
I cannot find reference to block or character devices in the mount*
manpages. They like to call them "special" files, very helpful
terminology. However, newfs(8) uses "special" files too, and I know
that you give it a raw device.
However, the above advice is valid for situations like,
% tar cf /dev/fd0c stuff
And
% tar cf /dev/rfd0c stuff
The first form can do Very Bad Things when the floppy is
write-protected, while the second will fail harmlessly with a useful
error message.
--
Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com
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