Hello everybody

I could use some help with another debian installation here. the floppy device was not automagically recognised during installation! there is no entry in /etc/fstab and if I do
I get: mount: special device /dev/fd0 does not exist

what's wrong here?
stimpy

Is the floppy module loaded? That is, if you do "lsmod | grep floppy", do you see anything? If you don't, try "modprobe floppy".

Then whether you modprobe'd floppy or not, do an "ls /dev/fd*", and what do you see? That is, looking around in /dev, do you see any fd devices, or anything close to it?

One last try - is udev installed? (try dpkg -l udev). If it isn't, try installing it as root (apt-get install udev), it fixes up your /dev directory rather nicely (gets rid of all those spurious devices that don't exist on your system).

Hope that helps. By the way, nice name - that was a great show.

thanks corfe
yes I love the ren & simpy show - "stimpy, you eeediot!"
still the same error, I can't mount the floppy device.
I did modprobe floppy as you suggested and here's the result I get from lsmod | grep floppy:
floppy 54992 0

and for ls /dev/fd*
0 1 2 3

there is a directory named "fd" in /dev. if I type ls in /dev/fd/ I get
0 1 2 255

I don't know the difference between the last two commands, but the results are different.
udev was installed already. do I have to do anything with it?
thanks again, corfe! I appreciate your help
stimpy

Well, you've got the module for it loaded (that's good), but it should have given you a /dev/fd0 device and it sounds like it didn't. Maybe it's a hardware problem? Are you pretty sure both the floppy cables (power and the other cable) are plugged in, and neither are upside down? Is it plugged into the motherboard the right way as well?

If your system doesn't dual-boot, a good way to test it is to try to boot off of a bootable floppy (from the BIOS), and see if it works.

It sounds like everything's right in software, I don't think there's much you should have to configure beyond loading the module. If it's not a hardware problem, I'm stumped.

Got it!

it was a bios issue. I remember having problems with a defective PCI slot during installation of the wireless card. I had to use the "fail safe" bios settings to get the computer to boot correctly afterwards. obviously that turned my 31/2" floppy into a 51/4".
it's all working perfectly now, thanks corfe!
stimpy