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 .