[Mageia-discuss] Can't access floppy drive

Tue Jan 31 12:28:01 CET 2012

On 30 January 2012 21:26, Paul Simon <psimon at sonic.net> wrote:
+> I see from your note that it has not been answered yet.  I have the same
+> problem with both Mandriva and Mageia but am not as advanced in Linux as you
+> are.  Let's hope there is someone smarter than we are who can help us, and
+> then add the few lines of code so that we who still use floppies can
+> continue in our old ways.
+>
+> Paul Simon
+> "TJ" <andrewsfarm at gmail.com> wrote in message
+> news:jg1nen$4r8$1 at dough.gmane.org...
+>>A Gnome user brought this up on a.o.l.mageia and a.o.l.mandriva. The issue,
+>>apparently, affects both distros. Both of us are using the 32-bit Mageia 1.
+>>I can't speak for him, but here is my problem:
+>>
+>> I don't do it often at all, but what I'd like to be able to do is have
+>> Dolphin detect when I put a floppy in the drive and add that to the Places
+>> panel, just as it now does when I put a CD or DVD in one of those drives.
+>> As it is now, when I put a floppy in the drive, nothing happens.
+>>
+>> lsmod shows that the floppy module is present. My fstab shows this for the
+>> floppy:
+>>
+>>> /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto
+>>> umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,exec,flush 0 0
+>>
+>> I can't even seem to be able to mount it by hand. $ mount /media/floppy
+>> appears to work. At least, the drive spins and the busy LED comes on for a
+>> while, then goes off. But, nothing shows in /media/floppy, and if I give
+>> the mount command again without unmounting the drive, it still works.
+>>
+>> But, $ mount /media/floppy; mount /media/floppy results in these error
+>> messages:
+>>
+>>> mount: /dev/fd0 already mounted or /media/floppy busy
+>>> mount: according to mtab, /dev/fd0 is already mounted on /media/floppy
+>>
+>> But if I look at mtab, the floppy isn't there. And giving the mount
+>> command again, on a separate line, produces no errors.
+>>
+>> It's as if the drive is mounted, then unmounted almost immediately. Or as
+>> if the driver didn't allow enough time for the disk to be read before
+>> deciding it couldn't be mounted.
+>>
+>> BTW, Windows XP, on the same hardware and with the same floppy, has no
+>> problem with access. This is an old-style floppy drive, connected to the
+>> motherboard. It is not usb.
+>>
+Not smarter, but probably been around longer :-)  So few people use
+floppies these days and I suspect that udev doesn't pick up the
+existence of the drive.  What I'd try is to get a line into /etc/fstab
+to mount the drive at boot.  You will need to keep a floppy in the
+drive, I think, so start by rebooting with a disk inserted, once you
+have your fstab sorted - you should find some help from a google
+search "linux floppy mount drive".
+
+Once you have it working, make a spare floppy that is unimportant, to
+keep in the drive for bootup.
+
+Sheer guesswork, but I think that should fix it.  You should be able
+to mount and umount the drive in dolphin, to allow you to change
+disks.
+