TITLE: TF2202 - Floppy Driver Patch README FOR: TF2202 PRODUCT AND VERSION UnixWare 2.03 Abstract -------- Floppy diskettes properly formatted and performance improvements for pkgadd from diskette with a 1:1 interleave. Symptom -------- 1) Format floppy diskette properly: This may occur on systems with more than 16MB of memory where the format command indicates that a floppy diskette was successfully formatted, but accessing the diskette afterward indicates that it is unformatted. 2) Pkgadd from diskette with 1:1 interleaving is very poor: The floppy driver performs reads on a sector by sector basis is the reason for the poor performance. 3) Desktop hang fix during access of the floppy device: When the Desktop MediaMgr is executed to access the floppy device, the window hangs with the floppy access light on. SOLUTION SPECIFICS ------------------ Apply the tf2202 file. Installation Instructions: DATATYPE: datastream 1. Download the tf2202.Z and the tf2202.txt files to the /tmp directory on your machine. 2. Read the release notes contained in this file. 3. Now become root, uncompress the file and add the package to your system using the following commands: $ su # uncompress /tmp/tf2202.Z # pkgadd -d /tmp/tf2202 If at the end of PTF2202 installation (pkgadd has not completed) and the floppy drive is being accessed (floppy indicator light comes on), change to the root console window (ALT SYSRQ H). Is the following message displayed: WARNING: FD(0): No diskette present - Please insert If so, insert a formatted diskette and pkgadd should complete. A system reboot is REQUIRED following the installation or removal of this PTF. General Description. ------------------- The floppy driver was upgraded as follows: 1) The buffer allocation logic was changed to use buffer space that had the proper constraints applied to ensure it was in DMA'able space for the format command to succeed as indicated. 2) The driver now performs a track read into an internal buffer then copy the requested sectors out from the track buffer to increase performance. 3) A busy flag was added to the driver to eliminate the hang when /sbin/fstyp is executed. /sbin/fstyp performs numerous filesystem types device opens quickly, and a previous open of the device is still being cleaned up when the next open occurs and thereby hangs the process/device. A new format command is installed to improve the verification performance and change the default interleave from 2 to 1. New Features. ------------ None. Software Notes and Recommendations. ---------------------------------- NOTE: After this PTF is installed or removed, the system must be rebooted immediately for the floppy device(s) to work. This PTF should be installed on UnixWare 2.03 for which floppy formatting fails, package installation via floppy is slow, or the Desktop MediaMgr hangs during floppy access. NOTE: The format command installed with the base installation of UnixWare 2.01 uses as its default an interleave of 2 during the formatting of diskettes. This interleave setting now causes long access and transfer delays with the new floppy driver being installed. For packaging diskettes this can be corrected by package transferring (pkgtrans) the image to your filesystem and re-format the diskettes with an interleave of 1 (default of the new format command). Once all of the diskettes have been re-formated, pkgtrans the package from your filesystem onto the floppies. Testing of the modified software contained in this package has been conducted only to the extent necessary to confirm that it resolves the problem(s) stated above ("Symptom"). Such testing consists of recreating the problem conditions (typically in a SCO test laboratory) and verifying that the problem no longer occurs. No other testing of this software has been done. Hardware Notes and Recommendations. ---------------------------------- This PTF is targeted for the i386, i486 and Pentium CPU's.