FDCONTROL(8)

NAME
fdcontrol - modify floppy disk parameters

SYNOPSIS
fdcontrol [-d 0|1] device
fdcontrol [-s] device

DESCRIPTION
Fdcontrol allows the modification of the run-time behavior of the floppy disk device specified by device. Device should be a character device.

Fdcontrol currently supports the specification of device parameters for the floppy disk drive ( -s, also default mode), or it allows the modification of the driver debug level, in case the floppy driver has been compiled into the kernel with the DEBUG option set (-d).

Since the implications of such actions are considered harmful, the underlying ioctl(2) command is restricted to the super-user.

When requesting a new parameter specification, the command asks the user for each individual tunable parameter, defaulting to the currently used value.

DIAGNOSTICS
Error codes for the underlying ioctl(2) commands are printed by the perror(3) facility.

BUGS
The fdcontrol command is currently under development. It's user interface is rather silly and likely to change in future, options should be provided to allow anything being modified from the command line.

The driver does actually support only two debug levels (0 and 1), where debug level 1 will generate huge amounts of output. It is likely to overflow the syslog if not used with extreme care.

SEE ALSO
ioctl(2), perror(3), fdc(4)

HISTORY
Fdcontrol is currently under development. It's user interface and overall functionality are subjects to future improvements and changes.

AUTHOR
The program has been contributed by Joerg Wunsch, Dresden.