[Tfug] APM

[A.Chris Hilton]

On Sun, 22 Sep 2002 09:05:10 -0700
"Jim, Cara & Sofia" <carasofia@cox.net> wrote:

> I am trying to install APM on my Dell Insprion 8200 laptop.  I have
> Debian 3.0 installed.  I found what I think is the correct APM package
> for my machine on Debians web page. I downloaded
> apmd_3.0.2-1.19_i386.deb on to my windows desktop computer.  I was
> going to put this on a floppy altough I was not sure if I need to use
> something like rawrite to format a floppy in Windows XP that Linux
> could read? I have a floppy drive that I can put in if I take out my
> cd burner, or I have a USB floppy I would prefer to use. How can I
> tell if Debian sees the floppy drive or what is necessary to do to
> configure the floppy drive internal or usb? After that what is
> necessary to get APM working?
> 
>  Any input/ help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
>  Jim

Hi Jim-

RaWrite is for writing bootable disk images to floppies.  Probably
wouldn't be much use to you in this case unless you were bundling your
apm package onto a boot floppy.  But that doesn't matter to you.  In the
wonderful world of Linux you can stuff your windows formatted floppy in
your drive, mount it, read it, write to it, no prob.  Most free 'nixes
have the ability to manipulate a large variety of foreign filesystems.

Not sure how your Deb distro handles your usb floppy.  Under recent
versions of RedHat and Gentoo, you simply plug in your usb floppy.  The
proper modules for the device are automagicly loaded and the /dev
entries are created.  All that remains at that point is to 'mount
/mnt/usbfd' (what I call it) and cp away.

So try plugging it in.  See what happens if you try 'mount /mnt/floppy'.
 Maybe one of the DebHeads on the list can shed more light on this part
of your question.

Chances are apm is already installed though.  Most installers (even
Debian's : ) ) are smart enough to figure out they're working with a
laptop and install the supporting software.  Try 'dpkg -s apmd'.  If its
there, check 'ps ax | grep apm' to see if its already running.  If its
not running, try executing the start script (should be in /etc/initd.d/
or similar) by hand.

-C-