[PLUG] Floppy Firewall

[Geoff Burling]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Jason Dagit wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Richard Amacker wrote:
>
> > Hi all.  My Linux router died, so I need to build another.  I'm
> > interested in using a 486 I have handy.  What's a good floppy firewall
> > distro? My requirements are:
> >
> > -I'm on cable, DHCP.
> > -I would like to run DHCP as a server for my home network
> > -I have to use a Winblowz machine to actually write the firewall floppy.
> >
> > I tried floppyfw, But it would not boot on my 486.  Came up with
> > "Loading intrd.gz...  Boot failed: please change disks and press a key
> > to continue".  I tried a standard boot disk on this 486, and it worked
> > fine.
>
> With the nature of floppy disks I would try a different floppy.  About 3
> different floppies with the same image before giving up on the image.  It
> is important that you try a different floppy, according to the Debian
> install howto reformating the disk isn't always enough.
>
> But I guess if the standard boot disk you tired was the same floppy then
> it's probably something between your computer and the floppy image.
>
Very true. I am reusing a number of floppies I have acquired over the
years, & what I have started to do with each new one is run the following
test on it:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0

If the raw write onto the floppy completes without a meaningful error
message the floppy passes the test. And may be reliable. The following,
despite the warning, *is* a successful write:

[geoff at joan]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0
dd: /dev/fd0: No space left on device
2881+0 records in
2880+0 records out

Geoff