.\" Copyright (C) 1993 by Joerg Wunsch, Dresden
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.Bq Fl t Ar steps_per_track
formats a floppy disk at device
should be a character device; it may be given either with a full path
name of a raw device node for a floppy disk drive
.Pq e.\ g. Pa /dev/rfd0 ,
or default name in an abbreviated form
In the latter case, the name is constructed by prepending
Note that any geometry constraints of the device node
are meaningless, since they're overridden by
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width 10n -offset indent
supress any normal output from the command, and don't ask the
user for a confirmation whether to format the floppy disk at
The normal way to specify the desired formatting parameters.
is the number of kilobytes to format.
Don't verify floppy after formatting.
Don't format, verify only.
.It Fl t Ar steps_per_track
An alternate method to specify the geometry data to write to the floppy disk.
flag has not been specified, the user is asked for a confirmation
of the intended formatting process. In order to continue, an answer
has been specified, a single letter is printed to standard output
to inform the user about the progress of work.
is printed when the track(s) is being formatted, then a
while it's being verified, and if an error has been detected, it
An exit status of 0 is returned upon successful operation. Exit status
1 is returned on any errors during floppy formatting, and an exit status
of 2 reflects invalid arguments given to the program (along with an
appropriate information written to diagnostic output).
has been developed for 386BSD 0.1
floppy disk driver. It later became part of the
The program has been contributed by
Dresden, with changes by Serge Vakulenko and Andrew A. Chernov, Moscow.