Hello folks,

This really is not a new issue caused by ubuntu 9.10; the floppy I'm referring to is made by "startup-manager" in Ubuntu 9.04.

I can mount all DOS-floppies, but I can not get any Linux distro to mount that boot back-up floppy created by startup-manager.

And believe you me: I have several distro's on my system.

This line is in my fstab:

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Is it possible that something needs to change here to mount that boot disk (and of course: also still be able to mount the DOS-disks)?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

i had a similar issue and to run
lsmod floppy

Did that. Trying to mount and got this error:

Invalid mount option when attempting to mount the volume.

sorry,
i had also problems mounting a boot floppy when i formatted it with
fdformat. (also it did boot i coulnd mount it). i formatted it with another tool (which i forgot, sorry) and it worked.
i aint got other ideas.
good luck

i had a look at my book: it might be mkdosfs /dev/fd0 or superformat /dev/fd0. after using one of them i was able to mount them (and, as said, i had to run lsmod floppy)

That will not work in this case, because every time the floppy is created, it is automatically formatted by "startup-manager".
And if I should format it now, there would be nothing left to mount except an empty disk, wouldn't there?

yes sure.(afaik)

one question (out of interest): creating a boot-floppy "manually" wouldnt be an option? that way you could format it with the other command so you will be able to mount it. i think.
i think i followed this how-to but replaced the formatting:
http://sidux.com/index.php?module=Wikula&tag=GrubFloppy

anyway: good luck for you.i hope you will get it sorted.

Seems interesting and promising as well.

Cannot test it right now, busy with something else, but I sure will give it a try.

Thank you very much.

*** This does not mean though, that I won't be expecting any other suggestions. Because, regarding to the error message, there is something wrong in the fstab file (options) to mount this kind of boot disk. I surely would prefer a solution with/in the fstab file.

Okay.
After a lot of fiddling and rebooting, I got it working now and have now a grub boot/back-up floppy I can mount.

---+---

*** Important ***

Make sure that all "savedefaults" are removed from your menu.lst, otherwise those OS's won't boot. All the others will though.

---+---

* Also take notice of that these commands are optimized for Ubuntu as I installed it (all mount points in directory /media), you'll probably need to adjust the floppy mount point in the code.

Perform as root:
----------------

$ fdformat /dev/fd0

$ mkfs -t ext2 -c /dev/fd0 *or* $ mkfs.vfat /dev/fd0

$ mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

$ mkdir -p /media/floppy/boot/grub

$ cp /boot/grub/stage1 /media/floppy/boot/grub
$ cp /boot/grub/stage2 /media/floppy/boot/grub

$ cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /media/floppy/boot/grub/menu.lst

$ umount /dev/fd0

$ grub
$ root (fd0)
$ setup (fd0)
$ quit

---+---

And you're done.
Now you have a grub back-up floppy/boot disk, which one can also mount.

I hope you'll find the disk useful.

---+---

If you do not want all the command-line fuss, I uploaded an image file of my disk, together with 2 programs of which (according your choice) you'll need 1 to write the image to disk. (rawrite and/or rawwrite)

Once written to floppy, you'll only need to copy your own menu.lst file over mine and your done.

$ cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /media/floppy/boot/grub/menu.lst

You can find the zip-file here:

http://www.beebab.be/que/linux_boot_+_rw.zip
(About 297 KB.)

---+---

My thanks go to:

j1alu (on this forum), who pointed me to this URL

http://sidux.com/index.php?module=Wikula&tag=GrubFloppy

There where some mistakes in that file that I adjusted (well, perhaps they were not really mistakes, but the correct commands for that distribution(?))

Take care, you all!