[Novalug] How the blazes do I write to a floppy?

[Beartooth]

On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Dave Aronson wrote:

> Beartooth wrote:
>
>> it's a .img file on my hard drive.
>>
>>     I also have an external USB floppy drive.
>>
>>     So how do I write the one to the other??
>
> Several people have recommended dd.  cp might also do.  I've 
> often used a floppy as the target for tar (as in, tar -cvf 
> /dev/fd0 filesToTar).

 	I've made a couple discoveries. One is that the boot 
floppies for DamnSmallLinux (with and without grub) are both 1.47 
-- yes 7 -- MB, and won't go on a floppy. Aaarrgghhh.

 	But what's really odd is that my main F8 machine, with a 
USB external floppy drive, refuses to let me write to a floppy at 
all *as* *user*, saying it belongs to root! I tried a couple of 
commands like "chown btth:btth /dev/floppy" and "chown btth:btth 
/dev/fd" -- just puttering -- and they didn't help.

 	But my old testbed with the internal floppy drive, 
currently running CentOS 5.1, let me write the same files, and a 
couple others to the same floppies as user, with no sweat. I just 
open the formatted diskette, and drag & drop the file to it.

 	Incidentally, this is in aid of another project, trying 
to get the old HP OmniBook XE2 (which is supposed to have 64 MB 
of memory, and claims 56) to accept an install. I know dd exists, 
but have a CD of DBAN handy, and I *know* that'll remove anything 
whatever.

 	It did, and now needs a boot floppy to find its own CD 
drive ... Hence the floppy-writing question.

 	I may try to cheat : run it by the local shop, and see if 
they still have the hardware to add a bunch of memory ....

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck Double Retiree,
Not Quite Clueless Linux Power User, with precious 
(very precious) little idea where up is.