Having never used automounting because of my old static hardware, I am finding this useful feature a minor challenge with my new box. I expect to continue learning, but for the short term I'd appreciate some help.

I have rc.udev, rc.dbus, and rc.hald scripts enabled. I have users in the cdrom, disk, floppy, and plugdev groups. I'm using Slackware 12.0 and KDE 3.5.7.

First some information to help future readers of this thread. After some confusion and head scratching, I finally got my USB stick to appear automatically on my KDE desktop. I configured the KDE desktop to show icons for all mounted removable media types. The desktop icon for my USB stick appeared only after I went through Konqueror and selected the device from the Storage Media tree. I don't want any auto-playing, just auto-mounting and the display of the desktop icon. The USB device icon appeared automatically in Xfce and in Thunar. The USB device appeared in Konqueror Storage Media, but not on the desktop.

I had the KDE Media Manager service enabled, but not the Media Notifier Daemon. Enabling the latter solved the problem with my USB desktop icons. Additionally, there are separate options for CDs and DVDs in the KDE Desktop configuration and each one must be enabled. Enabling them finally got CD/DVD icons to appear on the KDE desktop.

I hope these tidbits help others. I'm only half-way home, however.

Floppies are an issue I have not solved.

My floppy device is IDE, part of a Mitsumi multi-device reader. My logs show the IDE floppy device is recognized. I can manually mount the floppy from the command line or fstab.

When I start X through Xfce the floppy device icon always appears on the desktop and in Thunar. I can manually mount with Thunar, but there is no automounting.

Floppies do not automount in KDE or Xfce.

KDE simply does not acknowledge the device. After manually mounting a floppy, the device does not appear on the KDE desktop or in the Konqueror Storage Media tree. In KDE the floppy contents appears in /media/floppy after manually mounting. I enabled the KDE Desktop configuration to show unmounted floppies too. Nothing.

I could return to the old way of mounting floppies in fstab (noauto) and using Kwikdisk, but I prefer automounting now that I am partially successful with USBs and CDs/DVDs. On the other hand, perhaps this is a conceptual problem and floppies cannot be automounted the same way as USB sticks and CDs/DVDs because the floppy device is IDE rather than USB?

Thanks for any help.

could you post your fstab line for your floppy pls.

2) it may be a kde thing....so try this...if rhanded...rh click on desktop and create new floppy device....the icons can be changed for umounted in the properties area.

this icon is dependent on your fstab settings.

3) in kde control ctr there is an option to display umounted and mounted devices but I just tried that and it no good for me but might be ok for you

It isn't because the device is IDE (as obviously IDE devices can be automounted, like optical drives) but the fact that there is no way to detect the presence of a floppy in the drive (at least not on PCs, the older Mac floppy drives could).

Since there is no way to tell when a disk is in the drive beyond attempting to read from it occasionally, there is no reliable way to handle automounting them.

The best you could do would be to use something like autofs to mount the floppy when you try and access it (such as through Konqueror/Thunar) without you needing to manually mount it. This would have the advantage of automounting in the sense that you don't need to manually mount the device, but overcomes the lack of autodetection by the simple fact that you would obviously not be trying to access the floppy if you hadn't already physically inserted a disk.

Okay, thanks. I suspected something like that.

In the past, in KDE, when I never used udev/HAL/dbus, I used Kwikdisk to manually mount/unmount a floppy. That worked fine for the few times I used a floppy. However, with my new box (and udev/HAL/dbus, etc.) I get no icon at all on the KDE desktop.

In my pre-udev days I always had desktop icons for my CD and floppy drives because I pre-mounted (noauto) those devices in fstab. I understand udev/HAL/dbus is different, but I would expect after I manually mount a floppy that a disk icon would appear on the desktop, much like the USB stick or CDs and DVDs. Not so.

Here is my fstab entry for my floppy:

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,users,rw 0 0

After running hal-device | grep floppy and lshal I changed fstab to:

/dev/floppy/0 /media/floppy auto noauto,users,rw 0 0

No change: no desktop icon. Nothing in the KDE Storage Media

When I manually mount the floppy, the disk contents appear in /media/floppy, which is good. But no desktop icon.

When I tried this an icon showed on the desktop but immediately I received an error message:

The desktop entry file
/root/Desktop/Floppy Device
is of type FSDevice but has no Dev=... entry.

I deleted the icon and tried again. This time when the Properties dialog box appeared, I modified the Device tab to the same device location as in fstab. No error message that time and the icon stayed on the desktop.

I then unmounted the floppy through Kwikdisk. The icon remained on the desktop. I have my KDE Desktop configured only to show mounted floppies. I had to force a desktop refresh for the little green triangle to disappear (which signifies the device is mounted). However, when I mounted and unmounted through the desktop icon, then the little green triangle behaved as expected. Perhaps this is the best I can expect to do or hope for.

The Desktop configuration settings seem to have no influence on whether a floppy icon appears on the desktop.

I am still bewildered why no floppy device appears in the KDE Storage Media list.

Anybody with further ideas?

no but the first fstab mention of auto....means try formats in a certain order.

if you use only vfat floppies you can change part.

2) the second mention is noauto....AFAIK if you change that to auto it should mean automount.