Re: gfloppy: Could not determine current format type

[John Gotts <jgotts ww2 tqstats com>]

In message <m3zomev11h.fsf@wesley.springies.com>, Alan Shutko writes:

>John Gotts <jgotts@ww2.tqstats.com> writes:

>> I just don't understand why Red Hat includes mtools but not fdutils.

>Huh?  They serve different purposes.  Maybe you meant "fdformat", not
>mtools?  fdformat isn't in mtools.

>(Actually, it's in util-linux, which should make obvious the reason
>for inclusion.  Although fdutils certainly could be included as
>well.)

What I was trying to say is that mtools and fdutils naturally complement each
other.  They've always been on the same FTP/web sites, they have the same
maintainer, etc.  One without the other doesn't really make sense.  fdformat
may be part of util-linux but it should be fixed to work at least up to the
ability of fdutils or be deprecated because fdutils works better.

One reason Red Hat never included fdutils could be that for a while mtools was
developed away from prep.ai.mit.edu/ftp.gnu.org, but later it came back.
During that period, fdutils was generally announced together with that version
of mtools.  The new version of mtools later made it back to ftp.gnu.org but
fdutils never did and now neither of them are present on ftp.gnu.org or
alpha.gnu.org.  Ever since I started using Red Hat with version 3.0.3 I've
never been very happy with the way it's been set up for floppy use.  Admittedly
everybody should be using Zip disks by now, but the reality is that most people
still need floppies for certain tasks.

Please reply to me directly and not to the list.  This thread is off-topic.

Thanks,
John

--
John GOTTS <jgotts@linuxsavvy.com>  http://www.linuxsavvy.com/staff/jgotts