minor problems after major disaster

[przxqgl]

We'll tackle the internal disk first (I take it the rest are external disks? are they mounted automatically when you plug them in?)

the other disks are, in fact USB disks that plug in at will... and they all mount at boot, rather like i would make the secondary internal disk do...

You can give it a LABEL, but that's not necessary to mount it as /media/<drivename>

as long as i don't have to remember "21868c77-7fcc-457f-ac3f-a8c99f264ca3"... i had a brain injury a few years ago, which affected my ability to remember long strings of random numbers and letters...

We'll do that then:

<!-- SNIP! -->

4. Save and close and you should be done, the drive should be mounted next time you boot as /media/drivename

and so it was... 8) thanks!

by the way, while i was messing around with /etc/fstab, i noticed a line mentioning /dev/fd0 which is, if i remember from my basic "unix system administration class" a few years ago, my non-existent floppy disk which is mounting at boot despite the fact that it's physically not there...

if i just deleted that one line, would the "0 B Removable Media" that mounts at boot go away, or would it just cause more problems?

[kubicle]

by the way, while i was messing around with /etc/fstab, i noticed a line mentioning /dev/fd0 which is, if i remember from my basic "unix system administration class" a few years ago, my non-existent floppy disk which is mounting at boot despite the fact that it's physically not there...

if i just deleted that one line, would the "0 B Removable Media" that mounts at boot go away, or would it just cause more problems?

There should be no harm in commenting that out to test (you can delete if you want, but commenting it out makes it easier to revert)...but I don't think that line is the cause, the fd0 isn't actually mounted at boot for two reasons, firstly the 'noauto' option on the line means "do not mount at boot", and secondly...the system doesn't actually "mount" devices, but the file systems on the devices...and there obviously is no file system to mount.

However, if you actually have a /dev/fd0 device file, then udev thinks you have a floppy disk drive on the system...and that can probably cause the device notifier to list it's entry.

[przxqgl]

However, if you actually have a /dev/fd0 device file, then udev thinks you have a floppy disk drive on the system...and that can probably cause the device notifier to list it's entry.

i checked... i actually have a /dev/fd0 device file... i don't know what (if anything) is in it, becase even when i open it as su it says that "The file /dev/fd0 could not be loaded, as it was not possible to read from it. Check if you have read access to this file." and i do have read access... but my guess is that /dev/fd0 file was put there in the recent past, either by the system upgrades or when i renamed my /home/.kde directory in an attempt to change everything (which only partially worked)...

it couldn't be as simple as deleting that /dev/fd0 file, could it?

also, there appear to have been "new" random things that appear to be happening now, that weren't happening yesterday. i'm pretty sure that they're not because of the stuff i've been doing with fstab, but i don't know where else they could be from: two of my "favourites" in the K menu suddenly stopped working... "Konsole" doesn't even do anything when i select it from the "favourites" in the K menu, and "Amarok" now appears in the task bar, but it "thinks about it" for 20 seconds or so, then disappears from the task bar and doesn't start. if i go to Dolphin, hit F4 and type in "amarok" or "konsole" they both appear just as i would expect them to, but when i try to start them from the icons in the K menu, nothing happens...

also, i have a text document which ends up in the "recently used documents" menu quite often, which i have open and use kate to edit from time to time... except, now, when i select that text document out of the "recently used documents" menu, i get an error message from "Plasma Desktop Shell" saying "KDEInit could not launch '/usr/bin/kate'"

i went and checked, and /usr/bin/kate is there, as is /usr/bin/konsole and /usr/bin/amarok... as far as i can tell, they can not be started from that location, however...

very, extremely strange... 8/

[kubicle]

it couldn't be as simple as deleting that /dev/fd0 file, could it?

Unfortunately not, the "files" in dev aren't "regular" files, they are created by udev when booting based on your hardware (you can check this by running 'ls -l /dev/fd0'...the timestamp on that file should point to your last boot). In your case, your motherboard probably has a floppy disk controller (which is enabled in bios). To prevent /dev/fd0 from being created, one could try the following alternatives (listed in order of complexity, recommend trying them out in order):

1. Disable the floppy disk controller in BIOS (if possible), should prevent the controller from being detected
2. Blacklist the kernel floppy module from loading on boot:

echo "blacklist floppy" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_floppy.conf

sudo update-initramfs -u

3. Modify udev rules to not create /dev/fd0

I'm not experiencing issues with favorites/recent items, so I can't offer any immediate suggestions how to solve those (could be a bug not present in 13.10)

[przxqgl]

Unfortunately not, the "files" in dev aren't "regular" files, they are created by udev when booting based on your hardware (you can check this by running 'ls -l /dev/fd0'...the timestamp on that file should point to your last boot).

yeah, i recall that from my "basic unix system administration" class, as well

In your case, your motherboard probably has a floppy disk controller (which is enabled in bios). To prevent /dev/fd0 from being created, one could try the following alternatives (listed in order of complexity, recommend trying them out in order):

1. Disable the floppy disk controller in BIOS (if possible), should prevent the controller from being detected

that did it. once again, thank you... 8)

i don't know how the BIOS got changed, as i am not in the habit of poking around in the settings of the machine before it actually boots, but it was set to a 3.5 inch drive, and i reset it to <DISABLED> and it didn't show up any longer.

I'm not experiencing issues with favorites/recent items, so I can't offer any immediate suggestions how to solve those (could be a bug not present in 13.10)

strangely enough, they're not happening now.

it wasn't happening two days ago, it was happening yesterday, and today, it's not happening... and i can't reproduce it.

demons. 8/

[kubicle]

i don't know how the BIOS got changed, as i am not in the habit of poking around in the settings of the machine before it actually boots, but it was set to a 3.5 inch drive, and i reset it to <DISABLED> and it didn't show up any longer.

The setting probably wasn't changed, and it was enabled all along. It's just that the device notifier didn't list floppy drives prior to KDE 4.11 and udisks2 (at least that was the case on my end).

[przxqgl]

The setting probably wasn't changed, and it was enabled all along. It's just that the device notifier didn't list floppy drives prior to KDE 4.11 and udisks2 (at least that was the case on my end).

you're probably right... i was the victim of software that finally caught up with my hardware...

too bad the demons aren't so easily explained...

thanks again.