Hello

I am running RHEL v 3 a uname -a produces

Linux ?????? 2.4.21-20.EL #1 Wed Aug 18 20:58:25 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


Whenever I try to format/write a floppy drive my system crashes.
There are no obvious messages I can see in any of the logs and dmesg reveals

ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide



I can sometimes read the floppy disk.
However sometimes a 'mdisk a:' results in the files been correctly displayed on my screen but the system dying before it returns to the prompt.

Any help would be sincerely appreciated.

Thanking you

I Taylor
University of St Andrews
Scotland

I don't use redhat but here are some q's for you. Are you trying to format the floppy as root or as a user? Make sure your user is a member of the group disk. Also, try this command for formatting a floppy:

/sbin/mke2fs /dev/fd0