bionic (8) fdflush.8.gz

Provided by: fdflush_1.0.1.3build1_amd64 bug

NAME

       fdflush - force floppy disk drive to detect disk change

SYNOPSIS

       fdflush [device]

DESCRIPTION

       Fdflush  is a band-aid for a common PC hardware problem. Many PC floppy disk drives can't detect when the
       disk has been changed. The symptom of this problem is that  when  a  disk  is  changed,  the  drive  will
       continue to read buffered data from the previous disk rather than new data from the disk presently in the
       drive. Running fdflush makes the system believe the disk-change switch has been actuated, and the  system
       discards  the  buffered blocks in response to this information.  If you have one of these slightly-broken
       disk drives, you'll have to run fdflush every time you change a disk.

       The kernel uses two different ioctl commands to flush buffers. One's generic (BLKFLSBUF),  one's  floppy-
       specific (FDFLUSH).  fdflush calls both, and only reports an error if noth fail.

OPTIONS

       device The name of the floppy disk device, in the form /dev/fd1 .  The default is /dev/fd0 .

EXIT CODES

       Zero: success, one: ioctl error, two: inability to open the floppy (or other) device, three: usage error.

BUGS

       They're in your hardware.  Try swapping in another floppy drive to see if this problem goes away.

FILES

       /dev/fdN  floppy disk device.

AUTHOR

       Bruce Perens Bruce@Pixar.com .