@node diskseekd, fdmount, diskd, Commands
@section diskseekd
@pindex diskseekd
@cindex dust (shaking it off from a drive)
@cindex shaking off dust from a drive

Several people have noticed that Linux has a bad tendency of killing
floppy drives. These failures remained completely mysterious, until
somebody noticed that they were due to huge layers of dust accumulating
in the floppy drives. This cannot happen under Messy Dos, because this
excuse for an operating system is so unstable that it crashes roughly
every 20 minutes (actually less if you are running Windows).  When
rebooting, the BIOS seeks the drive, and by doing this, it shakes the
dust out of the drive mechanism. @code{diskseekd} simulates this effect
by seeking the drive periodically.  If it is called as @code{diskseek},
the drive is seeked only once.

@subsection Options

The syntax for @code{diskseekd} is as follows:
@example
@code{diskseekd} [@code{-d} @var{drive}] [@code{-i} @var{interval}] [@code{-p} @var{pidfile}]
@end example

@table @code
@item -d @var{drive}
Selects the drive to seek.  By default, drive 0 (@file{/dev/fd0}) is seeked.

@item -i @var{interval}
Selects the cleaning interval, in seconds.  If the interval is 0, a
single seek is done. This is useful when calling diskseek from a
crontab.  The default is 1000 seconds (about 16 minutes) for
@code{diskseekd} and 0 for @code{diskseek}.

@item -p @var{pidfile}
Stores the process id of the diskseekd daemon into @var{pidfile} instead
of the default @file{/var/run/diskseekd.pid}.
@end table

@subsection Bugs

@enumerate
@item
Other aspects of Messy Dos' flakiness are not simulated.
@item
This section lacks a few smileys.
@end enumerate
