Convert Floppy Image to an ISO (Solaris/Linux)

Device manufacturers still haven’t caught on that floppy drives are no longer standard equipment on most modern machines. I recently came across this issue when trying to install a RAID driver on a Solaris 10 (x86) box, and solved it thusly:

# lofiadm -a /export/home/mmichie/tmp/ARCMSR.DD
/dev/lofi/1

# mount -F pcfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt/floppy/

# mkisofs -R -J -o driverdisk.iso /mnt/floppy/
Total translation table size: 0
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 2428
Total directory bytes: 16384
Path table size(bytes): 122
Max brk space used 10000
278 extents written (0 MB)

In other words, download the raw floppy image and mount it as a loopback device. Then use mkisofs to translate it to an iso. Use your favorite CD-R burning software to burn the ISO. Install your driver disk.

This can be done similarly in Linux, the main difference will be mounting the floppy image:

mount -o loop driverdisk.img /mnt

The mkisofs command will be exactly the same as Solaris.