Hi,

I'm using Debian 9 Stretch. I like using floppies. Yeah, I still use floppies. I love them.

Anyway, I can mount and format them fine (right now they're formatted as fat) but I can only write to them as root, I can't write to them as a normal user. I would like to be able to write to them as a normal user. Is there any way to fix that?

Also, I'm going to format my floppies as ext2 (can't be a newer ext as I have another computer running Debian 2.1 that only uses ext2), I would like to be able to still write to them as a normal user after I've formatted them to ext2. Is that possible as well?

If you need anymore info, let me know.

Thanks

Permissions of floppy drive?

There's still a group called floppy. Is the normal user member of the floppy group?

How would I find the permissions of the floppy drive? I apologize, I'm fairly good with Linux to a extent but I don't have much experience when it comes to drive permissions.

Yes, I'm a member of the floppy group. Here's the output of "groups eric":

That's one of the first things I tried after Googling. I should note that there is no entry for the floppy drive in fstab. Gnome disks is set up to automate the mounting of the floppy drive.

Here's a cropped screenshot of the gnome disks program showing the auto-mount for the floppy drive:
http://i.imgur.com/FhuNoHq.jpg

While I'm not sure why anyone would still be using floppy disks, would it not be the mount point like any other disk/storage device, mounted to the system? I would check what they are on the mount point, your floppy disk is mounted to.

Hope this helps.

not debian but ScientificLinux6.4

i have to run modprobe FIRST
then i can make a folder in /mnt and then run Mount it mount the floppy drive


seeing as you ( and i ) can NOT buy any new 3.5 "mac" disks any more ( nor a 5.25 real floppy )
-- tossed out a unopened box of 25 last year seeing as i do not have a 5.25 drive anymore

because of this the current kernels do NOT even look for a 3.5 mac drive any more
so you have to manually probe for it , then mount it

The floppy disk gets mounted to /media/eric/disks. But for some reason the "disks" directory doesn't get created until the floppy disk is actually mounted by Gnome Disks. After it's unmounted, the "disks" directory gets deleted.

Maybe manually mount your floppy disk, to a mount point that you CAN set your own permissions on?

I did. I ran modprobe which got the floppy working, then I created a floppy.conf file in /etc/modules-load.d to load the module on boot. It works great. I can mount and format the floppy fine, I just can't write to it as a normal user.

I'm trying to fix it so I can do everything via GUI like I do my USB drives without having to mount it as root via terminal.

So what is the ownership of your floppy?

I edited the mount options in Gnome Disks to mount it to /media/eric/floppy and edited the permissions of the floppy directory so I can write to it but after the floppy got mounted to it, only root can write to it. Odd.

So you decisively ignore my question and will not check the ownership and permissions? I see, good luck.

I didn't ignore you. I'm just a little busy trying to get this working. That's all.

I created a "floppy" directory to mount the floppy to and gave it RW permissions so I can write to it but that didn't work either. After some more Googling, I edited the mount options in Gnome Disks and inserted "users,rw,uid=1000" and now I can mount and write to my DOS formatted floppies. But for some reason it won't mount my ext2 formatted floppy.

Here's the output of dmesg | tail after trying to mount my ext2 floppy:
So the uid=1000 option is causing it to not mount my ext2 floppy and I don't know why. I'm just confused.

I don't NEED my floppies formatted as ext2 but I prefer it.

Sorry for making you think I ignored you.

Ok, I fixed it. I have to mount each floppy individually after formatting it as ext2 and running this command:
That's where I was F'ing up I think because I was trying to just change the permissions of the floppy folder itself without having mounted the floppy first.