[Gllug] Waste Paper Maker

[Christian Smith]

It is done like this because the buffer cache uses a write back caching
policy, ie. data is not written back immediately. You'll notice that Linux
make working with floppies much faster than with DOS/Win9x etc.

The price you pay is that you have to manually umount the floppy to remove
it, else unwritten buffers won't be flushed, resulting in possible FS and
data corruption.

Under DOS, all writes to floppy are synchronous, and therefore can
basically garauntee that the FS is consistant after every write.

So, yes, you have to manually umount the floppy.*

Christian

* If you have the floppy automounted, it will be unmounted automatically
after a certain period of inactivity. In that case, you should still check
to see if it's mounted before removing.
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On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, Paul FitzPatrick wrote:

>Since posting the original message I have re-installed the OS 3 times, Now
>on a single 2Mb partition. It still hangs occasionally but not as often (I
>think) The screen savers no longer freeze but do alternate between the last
>two used ? (No - not set as random)
>
>But
>
>The Epsom stylus 740 now gives output from all three tests in Printtool,
>ASCII and Postscript albeit not in colour ! The driver is the Epsom stylus 800
>I have yet to discover if it will still work with Star office installed.
>
>Fd0
>Is it absolutely necessary in Linux to 'manually' unmount the floppy drive
>every time you read another disk? Can this be automated in some way. 
>
>Paul FitzPatrick
>
>
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