.TH RXFORMAT 8V "28 April 1983" .UC 4 .SH NAME rxformat \- format floppy disks .SH SYNOPSIS .B /etc/rxformat [ .B \-d ] special .SH DESCRIPTION The .I rxformat program formats a diskette in the specified drive associated with the special device .IR special . ( .I Special is normally /dev/rrx0, for drive 0, or /dev/rrx1, for drive 1.) By default, the diskette is formatted single density; a .B \-d flag may be supplied to force double density formatting. Single density is compatible with the IBM 3740 standard (128 bytes/sector). In double density, each sector contains 256 bytes of data. .PP Before formatting a diskette .I rxformat prompts for verification (this allows a user to cleanly abort the operation; note that formatting a diskette will destroy any existing data). Formatting is done by the hardware. All sectors are zero-filled. .SH DIAGNOSTICS `No such device' means that the drive is not ready, usually because no disk is in the drive or the drive door is open. Other error messages are selfexplanatory. .SH FILES /dev/rx? .SH SEE ALSO rx(4V) .SH BUGS A floppy may not be formatted if the header info on sector 1, track 0 has been damaged. Hence, it is not possible to format a completely degaussed disk. (This is actually a problem in the hardware.) .SH AUTHOR Helge Skrivervik