diskd(1)

💾 diskd — the manual, but make it cute

okay bestie, so this is the page for diskd from the General Commands Manual section, and it's basically the little gremlin that sits there waiting for you to shove a floppy in. no cap.

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🎀 Name

diskd — disk daemon; wait for disk to be inserted ✨

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🙈 Note

real talk: this manpage was automatically generated from fdutils's texinfo documentation. and the process? only approximative, bestie. some items — like cross-references, footnotes and indices — are literally lost in translation. they just have no appropriate representation in the manpage format. 💀

also, only the items specific to each command got translated, and the general information about fdutils has been dropped in the manpage version. so the original author strongly advises you to use the original texinfo doc instead. iykyk.

• to generate a printable copy from the texinfo doc, run these 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. 😭

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🌸 Description

the diskd command has the following syntax, bestie:

diskd [-d drive] [-i interval] [-e command]

Diskd waits for a disk to be inserted into a given drive, and then either executes the command or exits. this program can be used to automatically mount a disk as soon as it is inserted. main character energy fr fr 💅

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⚠️ Warning

this program works by switching the motor on for a very short interval, and then seeking to track -1. this might damage hardware in the long run. 😭

Amigas, which also use these techniques, are known for having problems with their disk drives no longer spinning up properly after a few month of usage. so like… be aware. 👑

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✨ Options ✨

• -d drive — selects the drive to observe for disk insertion. by default, drive 0 (/dev/fd0) is observed.
• -i interval — selects the polling interval. the interval is given in tenths of seconds. default is 10 (one second).
• -e command — gives the command to be executed when a disk is inserted. if no command is given the program simply exits. typically, the command mounts the disk. it can be a shell scripts which probes for several filesystems and disk geometries until it succeeds. 🫶

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💀 Bugs

• automatic unmounting cannot yet be handled. it is indeed not enough to scan for disk removal, because when the disk is removed, it is already too late: there might be some buffers needing flushing. however, the fdmountd program allows automatic unmounting by using the SYNC mount options, which switches off write buffering (see section fdmount). 😭
• the drive motor is running all the time, and on some computers, the drive led flickers at each time the drive is polled. 🙈

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🦋 See Also

Fdutils' texinfo doc

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and that's the whole vibe, bestie 💖 this was fdutils-5.6, dated 27Jan21, page diskd(1) — go forth and mount responsibly, mwah 🎀✨