/dev/fd0 is not a valid block device
 

I'm running RedHat7.2 on a Dell 333 machine. I just installed the OS a couple of days ago, and just tried to use the floppy for the first time.

(everything done as root on the console)

When I run "mount /mnt/floppy", I get "mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device".

ls -l on /dev/fd0 shows:
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 0 Feb 18 14:41 /dev/fd0

As you might notice, it's dated an hour ago. that's because I tried running 'MAKEDEV fd0' a little while ago, but still no luck.

No combination of mount options works, and lsof says neither /mnt/floppy or /dev/fd0 are open.

mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy fails the same way, and if I create a new directory in / and try that, same thing.

Any ideas anybody?

I've searched all over the net, and the only solution I've run across to this was to reinstall the OS. I don't have the time to do that, as I can just retype the files I need off the box, or install an ftp server to xfer them elsewhere, but that's low on my priority list.

The other significant thing I found was kernels that don't have floppy support built in, but this does, because /var/log/messages shows messages from the kernel about fd0 being a 1.44, FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306.

Help! Please!!!!!

Try mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

Is the diskette formatted with DOS/Windows? If so try the mtools. Should be installed on RedHat. Sort of like dos commands.

mdir a:

also has mcopy and mformat to work with dos disks.

This may or may not work. Try running as root depmod -ae.

Wierd...started working
 

I'm completely at a loss.

After I posted the beginning of this thread, I found something that said you will get this message when there's no floppy in the drive. Duh. Well, the floppy was in the drive.

I tried 'mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy', I tried /dev/fd1, /dev/fd2 and /dev/fd3. /dev/fd1 never returned, I hit ctrl-c after nearly 10 minutes.

I took the floppy to another identical machine (same hardware, OS) and the simply 'mount /mnt/floppy' worked. I copied some files to the floppy, took the floppy to another machine (I was in the middle of setting up mutliple firewalls and dns servers, so just copying working configs around), and everything was fine.

The next day, I stuck the same floppy back into the problem machine, and 'mount /mnt/floppy' worked. I just about fell over. The machine had not been rebooted or reconfigured in any way, it just answered a bunch of dns queries. I got the files off that I wanted via ftp to an intermediate machine whose floppy worked.

So, bottom line is, it seems to be working now, and for no good reason. As far as I know, it was fixed by having the machine's uptime counter cross 24 hours. Ugh.

Just out of curiosity, what does the /dev/fd0 line in the /etc/fstab look like? In particular, what is the file type?

I don't have access to it right now...but it's the standard RedHat 7.2 line...I don't think it specifies the fstype.

At any rate, all of the 5 or 6 machines I've got RH on were built from the same RH cds, so they all have the same fstab.

Same Problem
 

I have been having a similar problem with fd0. I have tried to manually mount the floppy drive, update the kernel, and look in /etc/fstab. There are no lines that point to /dev/fd0 in fstab. From what I have been reading, this is a known problem with Redhat 7.2. Any solutions would be appreciated, as I have been working on this problem for a couple of days now (and am wondering if I REALLY need a floppy at all)