nbdkit-floppy-plugin(1)

📦
version 1.48.1 · 14 versions
, in fedora 44

💾 nbdkit-floppy-plugin — bestie edition ✨

okay so this is the manual page for nbdkit-floppy-plugin, part of the nbdkit(1) fam, and it's giving retro floppy disk energy but make it virtual 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

nbdkit-floppy-plugin — create virtual floppy disk from directory 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nbdkit floppy [dir=]DIRECTORY
              [label=LABEL] [size=SIZE]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

nbdkit-floppy-plugin is a plugin for nbdkit(1) that literally conjures a virtual FAT-formatted floppy disk image out of a directory, on the fly, no cap. The files in the directory you point at (and all its subdirectories, yes all of them) show up inside the virtual floppy, and the whole thing gets served read-only over the NBD protocol. 🔥

The virtual floppy disk has a single partition (using an MBR partition table). Inside that partition lives a virtual FAT32 filesystem holding your files. Long filenames? Supported, obviously. 💅

Wanna make a CD/ISO instead? Go see nbdkit-iso-plugin(1). Want a Linux compatible virtual disk? That's nbdkit-linuxdisk-plugin(1)'s whole thing.

⚠️ Note bestie: the plugin does not save a temporary copy of the files, so you must leave that directory alone while nbdkit is running, or you may get an error (like, say, if the plugin tries to open one of the files you moved or deleted 🙈). This is different from how nbdkit-iso-plugin(1) and nbdkit-linuxdisk-plugin(1) work, because both of those keep a temporary copy of the files and directories. iykyk.

🎀 EXAMPLE 🎀

Create a virtual floppy disk:

nbdkit floppy /path/to/directory

👑 PARAMETERS 👑

  • [dir=]DIRECTORY — Specify the directory containing files and subdirectories which will be added to the virtual floppy disk. Files inside this directory will appear in the root directory of the virtual floppy.

This parameter is required, no skipping it.

The dir= prefix may be omitted in most cases. See "Magic parameters" in nbdkit(1).

  • label=LABEL — The optional volume label for the filesystem. This may be up to 11 ASCII characters. If omitted, NBDKITFLOPY is used. (yes that spelling, it's iconic, don't come for me 🫶)
  • size=SIZE — Optional total disk size. If omitted then the disk will only be large enough to store all the files and directories from DIRECTORY with no free space. ✨

💀 LIMITATIONS 💀

The maximum size of the disk is around 2TB. The maximum size of a single file is 4GB. Non-regular files (such as block special, symbolic links, sockets) are not supported and will be ignored. 🚫

The plugin does not support writes. nbdkit-cow-filter(1) can be placed on top to enable writes, but they will be thrown away when nbdkit exits and not written to the underlying directory. So, like, fake writes. 🙈

The virtual floppy will not be bootable. This could be added in future (using SYSLINUX) but requires considerable work. As a workaround use nbdkit-iso-plugin(1) instead.

FAT32 is always used, even for small disks (where dosfstools, for example, would choose FAT12 or FAT16). This results in extra wasted space, but since it is only virtual wasted space it isn't really important, and it simplifies the implementation greatly. slay, honestly 💅

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • $plugindir/nbdkit-floppy-plugin.so — The plugin.

Use nbdkit --dump-config to find the location of $plugindir. 🔍

⭐ VERSION ⭐

nbdkit-floppy-plugin first appeared in nbdkit 1.8. a whole era 🌈

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

nbdkit(1), nbdkit-plugin(3), nbdkit-file-plugin(1), nbdkit-linuxdisk-plugin(1), nbdkit-iso-plugin(1).

🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

Richard W.M. Jones 👑

Copyright Red Hat

🧚 LICENSE 🧚

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  • Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  • 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.
  • Neither the name of Red Hat nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY RED HAT AND CONTRIBUTORS ''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 RED HAT 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 SUCH DAMAGE.

and that's the whole page bestie 💖 this one's from nbdkit-1.48.1, dated 2026-08-29 — go make a floppy, you got this 🎀✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from