Can't consistantly read/write my floppy
 

There is something very wrong with the way my RH7.0 /Gnome machine is accessing my floppy drive. Even running as root, I seem to have only one opportunity to write a file to the disk after the computer is booted up (the floppy is mounted at boot; it's listed in my fstabs file). The fisrt time that I use the floppy either to read or write from a terminal or a Gnome window (ie. Gnotepad, the Home directory, or the floppy directory window) everything seems to work fine. However if the disk is removed (ie. to be taken to another computer to print out the file) and then placed back into the RH machine I can no longer read the contents of the disk, let alone write to the disk. Gnotepad won't write to it. If I mount it again from the terminal (mount -w -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/) the terminal squaks that the disk is already mounted...BUT now I can read the contents from the terminal or from Gnome window. However I still can't save to the disk either from Gnotepad, dragging and dropping a file to the floppy, or through the terminal. The error states that the disk is a read only device?!? How do I fix this? This process seems to be very inconsistant and makes the OS of less value.
A point of interest: Many individuals are looking to an alternative to Windows. They don't want an adventure in an operating system. The basic Windows product sucks, but it is more friendly and usable than Linux. If Linux wants the general OS market (or a bigger share of it) the people who develop the distribution need (I can't stress this word enough...NEED) to think; plug and play installation, simple steps to carry out processes, only include the highest of quality applications, set standards for the programs (cut out the crappy stuff),cut the multitude of programs that do essentially the same thing, and anarchy in a corporation equals failure. There can be a number of rationale to counter to above points; the bottom line is if the people at RH want to continue to have a job they need to meet the consumers' needs. The consumer doesn't want a hassle. :smash:

You don't want to have your floppy mounted at boot up. My line for my floppy looks like this:

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy vfat noauto,rw,user 0 0

The noauto prevents it from being mounted at boot up.

When you go to use a floppy, make sure the write protect tab is set so that you can write to it. Insert floppy then run mount /mnt/floppy. When you are done writing to the disk and you want to remove it, you first unmount the floppy. Like this umount /mnt/floppy. Then you can remove the floppy.