How To Duplicate VTS Install Disks

[Guy Lancaster <glanca@gesn.com>]

  We used to use DOS and Windows DISKCOPY to duplicate VTS disks but
it seems that these have become too fussy.  The Windows Copy Disk
(right click on the floppy drive in the explorer) can't read a Unix source
disk and the DOS box DISKCOPY complains that a pre-formatted target diskette
is incompatible.  So we now need to do the copies on a Unix system.

  There is a ddiskcopy utility floating around and you can use that if it's installed (just try running it).  Otherwise, here's how to do the deed using the trusty dd utility.

  (1) First, you need to copy the source disk image to a file.  You can make as many copies as you want from a single image so name and place it according to your needs.  Assuming that you will be finished in one session, I would recommend putting it in /tmp/mydisk1 .   Use disk numbers to keep track of multiple disk images.  The command for this is:

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/tmp/mydisk1

  (2) Second, copy the image to as many blank disks as you need.  For each one the command is:

dd if=/tmp/mydisk1 of=/dev/fd0

  (3) (Optional) Verify the copy.  The VTS install disks are prepared using tar so you can verify the copy using:

tar tvf /dev/fd0

This reads the disk and lists the contents.  You don't need to wait until the bitter end so if it's listing files and not giving errors you can abort this using CTRL-C.

  (4) Clean up.  If you don't need to keep your disk image files around, delete them using:

rm /tmp/mydisk1

  ...and that's it.

  Of course licensing issues are another matter.  :-)

                   Guy