Can't mount floppy. "fd0 is not a block device" Strange.

Travis86 · 12-21-2006, 12:22 AM

When I go to mount a floppy on my new Gentoo install, it says:

Code:

gentoo ~ # mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

However, /dev/fd0 should be a block device:

Code:

gentoo ~ # ls -l /dev/fd0
brw-rw---- 1 root root 2, 0 Dec 20 23:52 /dev/fd0

Here's my fstab if that helps:

Code:

/dev/hda1               /boot           reiserfs                noauto,noatime  1 2
/dev/hda3               /               reiserfs                noatime         0 1
/dev/hda2               none            swap            sw              0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660         noauto,ro       0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy     auto            noauto          0 0
proc                    /proc           proc            defaults        0 0
shm                     /dev/shm        tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0

Why can't I mount a floppy?

diilbert · 12-21-2006, 05:05 AM

Is there a floppy in the drive ?

alexander_bosakov · 12-21-2006, 08:54 AM

Quote:

Is there a floppy in the drive ?

And if there is, are you shure it is in a good condition - the diskettes are prety unreliable media?

sheryco · 12-21-2006, 08:59 AM

What kind of file system is in the floppy ? msdos, ntfs, ext2 or ext3

Travis86 · 12-21-2006, 02:38 PM

Yes, there's a floppy in the drive. It's a floppy I formatted with Windows. I've compiled the kernel with Windows filesystem support. I can read the floppy on my Windows computer, but I've also tried another floppy, too.

sheryco · 12-21-2006, 03:48 PM

if you have formatted this floppy with windows most probably the file system is msdos or ntfs
so try #mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
or #mount -t ntfs /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

diilbert · 12-21-2006, 08:35 PM

Code:

# mount -t auto /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

will work as well.

Travis86 · 12-21-2006, 11:15 PM

It does the same thing:

Code:

gentoo ~ # mount -t auto /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

But it never even checks to see if there's anything in the drive.

I am pretty certain that it checks the floppy when it boots, so the drive is connected.

pixellany · 12-21-2006, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Travis86

It does the same thing:

Code:

gentoo ~ # mount -t auto /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

But it never even checks to see if there's anything in the drive.

I am pretty certain that it checks the floppy when it boots, so the drive is connected.

Do we know that /dev/fd0 is actually the floppy?? Do this to check:
dmesg|grep fd

Here is the relevant dmesg entry on my machine (Mepis):
[17179598.444000] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

Travis86 · 12-22-2006, 12:15 PM

I looked through the entire output of dmesg, but there's no mention of a floppy drive. Is that a problem?

pixellany · 12-22-2006, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Travis86

I looked through the entire output of dmesg, but there's no mention of a floppy drive. Is that a problem?

Yes!!
Is this a regular old floppy floppy, or maybe a usb floppy? Give us a description of your hardware?
Do you have any other OS on the machine? Does the floppy work there?

Travis86 · 12-22-2006, 05:59 PM

It's a normal floppy drive. I checked the BIOS, and it's set up properly there. I checked inside the case, and everything looks good. I rebooted with a DOS bootdisk in the drive, and it booted on it. I tried dmesg again, but there's still no floppy. Have I missed some kind of kernel configuration?

pixellany · 12-22-2006, 06:09 PM

You just hit the shallow end of my knowledge pool

Travis86 · 12-23-2006, 03:27 PM

Something was really messed up with my kernel config. Fortunately, I hadn't gotten around to deleting my config from two kernels ago.

For one thing, I found a little option that wasn't set:
Device Drivers -> Block devices -> Normal floppy disk support

And when I rebooted, I found that ReiserFS support wasn't enabled and it went into kernel panic. Fortunately, I also had a Beyond4 kernel set up, so I booted off of that. (Beyond4 is an experimental patchset.)

It's one of those problems that I don't know how it happened, and can't figure it out, but now I *think* it's set up right. The only thing I can think is that when I backed up the config, I moved the file instead of copying it.

Oh, and not only does it boot again, but the floppy works, too.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I didn't know about that dmesg stuff before.