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    Enable your floppy drive

    This worked for me, you may have to experiment a little. (For people that arrived at this post from Google or another search engine, the menu and link editing is Kubuntu 12.04 specific, the basic enabling may work across other distros)

    DO NOT DO THE /ETC/MODULES EDIT IF THERE IS NO PLUGGED IN FLOPPY DRIVE IN YOUR SYSTEM, IT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO LOCK UP LINUX WITHOUT ONE.
    Open Kate as sudo in a terminal (type kdesudo kate, a 'root' session of Kate will open), open the file /etc/modules, on a new line just below the last line, simply type

    floppy

    Click save, open /etc/fstab in kate (still running as root), put a # in front of this line:

    /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

    It should look like this afterwards:

    #/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

    (disables the line, apparently useless anyway), click save, close Kate and the terminal. In User Management in System Settings, add the 'floppy group' to your user by clicking edit. Reboot, this will load the kernel floppy module (aka driver).

    In your new boot session, create a 'Mount Floppy' entry in the Kmenu...right click, edit applications, click new item, in the name field, type Mount Floppy, in the command field, type or paste

    udisks --mount /dev/fd0

    Click the blank icon area, drop the icon selection list down, select System, system icons will appear, scroll to the floppy icon and highlight it, click OK, click save at the top of the editor window, the new 'Mount Floppy' entry will appear at the top of the menu in the menu editor window, drag the new 'Mount Floppy' icon to 'System' (you may have to expand 'System' first), to its alphabetical position. Click save or close and then click save in the pop up sub-window. This new menu item can be added to the desktop by right clicking it from the Kmenu.

    Right click the desktop view folder, select 'create a link to device', in the Device field, type or paste

    /dev/fd0

    Select the floppy icon as previously mentioned, click OK (when the floppy is mounted, mouse-over this link to device to see mounted symbol and to make it disappear after unmounting).

    Open Dolphin as sudo from a terminal after mounting the floppy (type sudo dolphin, a 'root' Dolphin window will open) and access the floppy disk at /media/disk/ for reading and writing. The floppy can be unmounted from desktop 'link to device' by right clicking and selecting unmount. The floppy drive light might stay on after unmounting, it is safe to eject the disk, just be sure the disk is actually unmounted (the folder 'disk' will disappear from the 'media' folder when it is successfully unmounted).

    In Dolphin, right click the 'Places' side panel and select 'Add Entry', in the 'Label' field, type Floppy, in the location field, type /media/disk/, choose the system floppy icon as previously mentioned, click OK. When clicking on this icon in Dolphin, the contents of the floppy will only be shown if it is mounted.
    Last edited by Snowhog; May 06, 2012, 11:01 AM. Reason: Changed sudo for kdesudo, which you want to use when launching a GUI app from the CLI.

    #2
    I successfully updated my BIOS from a floppy created in Kubuntu, this is a milestone for me, couldn't even read or format a floppy in other distros.

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      #3
      Hi all....

      Looks like the "udisks" package was fixed from 10.04.
      Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ loves and cares about you most of all! http://peacewithgod.jesus.net/
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        #4
        Looks like, you have no idea how many distros I fought with (the software, not the people, lol) trying to get my floppy drive working, I am still in shock.

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          #5
          I realize that this is an old thread, but I've recently had a need to salvage some data from some old floppies. So I do appreciate the effort that went into documenting this procedure and for being able to get to these old relics and their valuable data.

          Just one thing; whatever happened to being able to set up a floppy drive in fstab, being able to insert a diskette and having it finish mounting ("automagically"), then being able to simply mechanically eject the diskette (after the write light goes out), and the filesystem being equally automagically unmounted. Now it has been a while since I've used a floppy drive in Linux, so I'm sure there was a little more to it than that - at least in terms of set up - but I don't remember having to mount and unmount with menu options in some older versions of Kubuntu or some other distros. Can this be done with udev?
          The next brick house on the left
          Intel i7 11th Gen | 16GB | 1TB | KDE Plasma 5.27.11​| Kubuntu 24.04 | 6.8.0-31-generic



          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by jglen490 View Post
            Can this be done with udev?
            I'm not sure, that one is over my head, I left the floppy drive out during my last hardware upgrade (new case and SSDs). The original post solution works, that much I know.

            @Snowhog...thanks for changing sudo to kdesudo, I had no idea all this time it was required for a root permission GUI app/utility.

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              #7
              Yep, it does work.

              i was dinkin' around the old interwebs and found a discussion on the Ubuntu forums. Turns out there was a an issue and discussion in Launchpad. Someone "forgot" to include floppy support in an update. The rationalizing was that with all the notebooks and other small format platforms, that floppies weren't being used anymore. But, as it also turns out there is a new version 2.0 of udisks that does include floppy recognition and supposedly the old process (in 8.10/9.04?) of just inserting a floppy disk into the drive will allow "automagic" recognition, again. Stay tuned. Maybe by then, I'll have dug up all my old floppies, saved my old data, and won't have to worry about it again!

              Anyway, 'preciate the good work tek_heretik
              The next brick house on the left
              Intel i7 11th Gen | 16GB | 1TB | KDE Plasma 5.27.11​| Kubuntu 24.04 | 6.8.0-31-generic



              Comment


                #8
                Hi Tek

                I would also like to thank you for the original post and also the ensuing comments caused by it.

                woodstillneedstodigoutafloppybecausethereweresoman nywithpicsfromtheSonyMavicasmoke

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