diskseekd

diskseekd(1)                General Commands Manual               diskseekd(1)

Name
       diskseek,  diskseekd  -  disk  seek  daemon; simulates Messy Dos' drive
       cleaning effect

Note
       This manpage has been automatically generated  from  fdutils's  texinfo
       documentation.   However,  this process is only approximative, and some
       items, such as cross-references, footnotes and indices are lost in this
       translation process.  Indeed, these items have no appropriate represen-
       tation in the manpage format.  Moreover, only  the  items  specific  to
       each  command  have  been translated, and the general information about
       fdutils has been dropped in the manpage version.  Thus I  strongly  ad-
       vise you to use the original texinfo doc.

       *      To  generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run the fol-
              lowing commands:

                     ./configure; make dvi; dvips fdutils.dvi

       *      To generate a HTML copy,  run:

                     ./configure; make html

              A      pre-made      HTML      can      be       found       at:
              `http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/fdutils'

       *      To  generate  an  info  copy (browsable using emacs' info mode),
              run:

                     ./configure; make info

       The texinfo doc looks most pretty when printed or as HTML.  Indeed,  in
       the  info  version  certain  examples  are difficult to read due to the
       quoting conventions used in info.

Description
       Several people have noticed that Linux has a bad  tendency  of  killing
       floppy  drives.  These  failures  remained completely mysterious, until
       somebody noticed that they were due to huge layers of dust accumulating
       in  the floppy drives. This cannot happen under Messy Dos, because this
       excuse for an operating system is so unstable that it  crashes  roughly
       every  20 minutes (actually less if you are running Windows).  When re-
       booting, the BIOS seeks the drive, and by doing  this,  it  shakes  the
       dust  out  of  the  drive mechanism. diskseekd simulates this effect by
       seeking the drive periodically.  If it is called as diskseek, the drive
       is sought only once.

Options
       The syntax for diskseekd is as follows:

          diskseekd [-d drive] [-i interval] [-p pidfile]

       -d drive
              Selects  the drive to seek.  By default, drive 0 (`/dev/fd0') is
              sought.

       -i interval
              Selects the cleaning interval, in seconds.  If the  interval  is
              0,  a  single seek is done. This is useful when calling diskseek
              from a crontab.  The default is 1000 seconds (about 16  minutes)
              for diskseekd and 0 for diskseek.

       -p pidfile
              Stores  the  process id of the diskseekd daemon into pidfile in-
              stead of the default `/var/run/diskseekd.pid'.

Bugs
       1.     Other aspects of Messy Dos' flakiness are not simulated.

       2.     This section lacks a few smileys.

See Also
       Fdutils' texinfo doc

fdutils-5.5                         03Mar05                       diskseekd(1)