This is mostly just FYI, but if anyone else has played around with it, I'd like to know.. I finally got around to trying out some packet-cd patches to the Linux kernel so that I could write to a CD-RW just like another filesystem. Of course, it's still experimental, so it didn't work 100%. I went and downloaded a patch for packet writing from http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/patches/packet/ As far as I can tell, that's not the official site, but I got that location through a post on the packet-writing mailing list http://lists.suse.com/archive/packet-writing/2002-Sep/0012.html Anyway, I applied that patch along with preemtible kernel and low-latency scheduling patches (which might explain some problems ;-) to a Debian kernel source package. I selected what appeared to be appropriate options in the kernel. In particular, I enabled `Packet writing on CD/DVD media' under `Block Devices'. Upon booting, I looked at the fairly sparse documentation for the UDF filesystem tools (udftools in Debian, though I don't know if they're older than what I should be using). There are three or four basic steps to using packet writing at this point: Quick blank/format of the disc: cdrwtools -d /dev/scd0 -q If you compiled support as a module, make sure it's loaded modprobe pktcdvd Associate your CD/DVD burner with a Packet CD/DVD device pktsetup /dev/pktcdvd0 /dev/scd0 Mount the filesystem mount -t udf /dev/pktcdvd0 /mnt At this point I got worried, as I hadn't remembered to enable UDF write support in the kernel configuration. However, I was still able to write to the disc. I'm confused why it worked, I suppose I might have to dig into code at some point. Anyway, I mounted the disk, and saw a good ol' `lost+found' directory, and was able to touch a file or two, and copied a tarball of the linux kernel source to the disk. It all seemed to work fine, though much of the writing seemed to be delayed until I umounted the disc. I think it ran into an error, as the machine froze for a few seconds at one point. After playing around a bit, I tried putting the disc into my DVD-ROM drive to just read it. Doing that was a bad idea, apparently, as attempting to read the disk just caused the kernel to reset the IDE bus over and over until I rebooted the system. After that, I think I was able to read the disc read-only in the CD-RW drive, but it didn't want to mount as read-write again. I just got back to where I was last night, as I had to blank the disc I was using and reformat it (a real pain on a 4x drive). Anyway, something to play with. I wouldn't trust it yet, and it's slower than just creating an ISO image and burning it to CD-RW if you know what you want to write (since you need to (blank,) format, write, as opposed to merely (blank,) write). But it's nice if you're just adding one file at a time (and it's possible to remove stuff, too). However, for people who want a replacement for a floppy, I think it's probably even easier to just get a portable USB mass storage device, like a keychain flash memory drive or a pocket hard drive. Just my opinion.. Well, I've probably wasted enough bandwidth.. -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ Famous last words - Don't / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ worry, I can handle it. \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20021001/a0982817/attachment.pgp