floppy

[senorian]

I have been using Kubuntu 6.06.1 since it came out. Today a friend came by and asked to read a floppy that he had. I inserted the floppy but then nothing. I suddenly realised that I had never attempted to use the floppy drive since I installed Kubuntu.
There was no icon on the desktop, no listing on "system". Nothing.
(while messing around I managed to put a floppy icon on the desk top which , when clicked. shows:

"The desktop entry file
/home/jan/Desktop/Floppy Device
is of type FSDevice but has no Dev=... entry."
(I am now unable to remove this icon!)

I have searched for "floppy" and found one relevant entry but I seem unable to access "/etc/fstab"
I assume I have at some point messed up my installation; and would like to know how to reinstall the floppy drive. (without reinstalling the OS)
thanks

[penguin.ch]

Re: floppy

You may try to mount it by hand:

sudo mount -v /dev/fd0

(from a console; disk inserted ...)

[DaMoGan]

Re: floppy


Do you mean that /etc/fstab doesn't exist? If that's the case, you'd better fix it before you reboot! Otherwise your system won't come up. If you mean you cannot save changes to it, then edit it with the command 'sudo /etc/fstab'. Or do you mean something else?

I don't have a Dapper system with a floppy, but on my Edgy system, I have the following entry for the floppy in /etc/fstab:

/dev/ /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

(Anyone with a Dapper system with a floppy, let me know if this has changed...)

[penguin.ch]

Re: floppy

/dev/ /media/floppy0 [...]

/dev/what? /dev/fd0, I'd guess

[DaMoGan]

Re: floppy


Heh, how I wrote it is exactly how it appears in my fstab, but yeah, I'm sure it probably should be /dev/fd0. Thanks!

What can I say? I haven't actually had to use a floppy on this machine...

[senorian]

Re: floppy

Thanks to you both
UnicornRider:
Itried and got this:
can't find /dev/fd0 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
DaMoGan:
I tried sudo /etc/fstab and got:
/etc/fstab: command not found
What am I doing wrong?
thanks

[Guest]

Re: floppy

recently i used a floppy drive under Edgy, (to do a bios disk)
and as DaMoGan rightly said about the default floppy entry in the fstab, i too discovered that the value after /dev/ was missing. Once i had corrected that with "editor of choice" i was able to mount the floppy as a normal user at the default location stated in the fstab and above..

Note for "editor of choice" utilise vi or vim or e3 or any other console editor that you know of or utilise something like kedit or gedit for GUI people.

The command structure is: sudo "editor of choice" /etc/fstab
of course don't place your editor in quotes :P

the dev value is indeed /dev/fd0

once all is good,
mount -t vfat /media/floppy0


hope that helps

[DaMoGan]

Re: floppy


Oh, and if you want to try from the command line to mount the floppy, the command would be of the form:

sudo mount -v /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0

This is basically the command UnicornRider gave you (and which would have worked fine had there been the proper entry in /etc/fstab) but it specifies the mount point (/media/floppy0). Note that the directory /media/floppy0 has to exist beforehand.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[dave67]

Re: floppy mounting fixed maybe


I spend some time on this issue and now I got me a desktop icon of my floppy and I can mount it by clicking on the icon and even umount it the same way but by right clicking the icon and selecting umount. I had almost the same problem with my MP3 player which is mounted in the same way and I have not tried it yet on Kubuntu. Since I purchased the Official Ubuntu book well I think I should use it huh good idea. I used what the book said about mounting USB drives and changed it a little. below is how I finely got my floppy to mount like I wanted and were I wanted it.

Too become root for those who do not know type sudo -i in console (don't like typing sudo all the time)

First I created a directory in the /media folder called fd0 it in console by go to the /media
change to the media directory type

cd /media

than I mounted the device by typing in the console the following....

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/fd0

and it mounted which shocked me. you might or might not see the directory in a window after the above command.

than I created a link to the device on the desktop by right clicking the desktop and selecting create new =link to device = floppy device. a window comes up and you see tabs click on the device tab, type in the device field type /dev/fd0 click ok. Only problem is when you mount a device in console it is always root but we can change this.

I am not good with command-line yet this might be able to be done with a single command.

Type the following in a console
change to the media directory

cd /media

type ls -al

you should see something like this

rwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 2007-04-18 21:28 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 2007-04-14 18:46 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2007-04-14 18:46 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-04-14 18:46 cdrom0
drwx------ 3 main main 7168 1969-12-31 19:00 fd0 ( this is it)
drwx------ 3 main main 16384 2007-04-17 17:52 sda1 ( this is my USB flash drive)

To change the permissions for the fd0 directory type this

sudo chmod a+w fd0



Once this is done you should be able to access the drive try it by clicking on it you should see the directory come up and what ever is on the floppy accessible. If not than right click and the icon go to the permissions tab and see what it has for the owner should have can read & write.

if you click on the floppy icon on the desktop and get the no mtab or fstab than unmount it in the console umount /media/fd0 than try the icon on the desktop.

clicking once on the icon will mount the drive, when you mount a disk and the directory show in a window

In the past after I umount the floppy I could not get it to mount again so with hands shaking I umount the floppy than I mounted it again and it worked I did this many times not believing it. I even tried different disks. I think the key is the permissions that was changed on the fd0 directory.

I checked where the mount info is stored when the drive mounted and that directory is mtab.

to see it type cat /etc/mtab in the console.

Please try this and post back your results

here is my mtab after i mounted the floppy


/dev/hda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,quiet,shortname=mixed,uid=1 000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8 0 0
tmpfs /lib/modules/2.6.15-26-386/volatile tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/fd0 vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,quiet,shortname=mixed,uid=1 000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8 0 0

[MoonRise]

Re: floppy

You seemed to have posted twice. Here is my response to your first one. Might help.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081889.0

[senorian]

Re: floppy

thanks to dave67 for your long explanation and to MoonRise for bothering to post twice!!
Since I have never felt the need to use the floppy but once in the last 6 months or so ( and since I have an XP computer with a functional floppy) I have put off fussing around with the floppy on this computer.
I am interested in Feisty Fawn and will see if it comes with floppy enabled
Many thanks to all who replied to my request for help.

[dave67]

Re: floppy

The floppy It is a removeable media so most like it will have to be mounted to use it but they could make that easier just have it configured to mount on a click of the icon. I use a older distro called xandros and they have it like that.

[penguin.ch]

Re: floppy

I use a older distro called xandros and they have it like that.

Do you know how they did the trick? If it were by means of script or the like, we may be able to "port" this to Kubuntu (just another one of my silly ideas, anyway ...).

[dave67]

Re: floppy

I know they mount it in the /mnt not the /media. I install Kbuntu on my main pc which I am using now and I found out something about the floppy that i did not notice before. if you go to the system menu on the panel and go to storage media you see a icon there for the floppy and click on it and it does it's like mounting thing but when it's done your window has this at the top

system:/media/fd0-konqueror


and you see a empty folder well if you go to the root directory and browse to the /media/fd0 and there is your floppy directory click it and it will open to the contents of your floppy, seems either the link or something to system= media storage is wrong since I tried the about found the fd0 directory mounted. I found out this little bug I guess you can call it that after I posted the floppy mount fix oh well.

I anyone needs to do is after you get this above emtpty folder above use part of my floppy post about adding the Icon to the desktop and you are done I never had to change the permissions on this PC and I have access to the floppy and it's permissions are drwx.

konqueror has the wrong directory where would I ask about this launchpad?
since they can help me fix this or maybe some one out there can help us with this little problem. I am not sure how to change this.

[Mike Dolan]

Re: floppy

I know this is an old thread but I don't want to start a new one if other users might find the answer they need here.

So far, by my experience, Kubuntu fails in comparison with Ubuntu because of a huge, FATAL flaw. THE FLOPPY DRIVE CAN'T BE USED!!

In Ubuntu the floppy is always available for short file transfers to other systems, such as notes and word processing files.

Is it REALLY impossible to make Kubuntu as useful? Must Kubuntu remain crippled?

How can users PERMANENTLY install the floppy drive, so that it becomes available permanently?

Somebody MUST know the answer to this!!