Floppy takes long time to mount

JimW · 09-01-2003, 12:15 AM

I'm using Mandrake 9.1, just recently upgraded from Man 9.0

My main use of the computer is as a word-processor, so I'm very low on the technical knowledge, though my local LUG has been very helpful.

But, on to the problem: Since moving to 9.1, the floppy takes over a minute to mount. If I have nothing in the floppy drive, the whole /mnt directory comes up almost instantaneously. When I put a floppy in, it takes a very long time to mount.

This is not a hardware problem; I still have Windoze up, for some little things that I can't manage (yet) through linux. On the Windoze partition, the floppy comes up like a shot.

I believe it has to do with putting something into the /fstab, though I may have that wrong.

However, something's got to be put somewhere. What I need is step by step instructions.

Thanks

Jim

jalal · 09-01-2003, 04:37 AM

you can try mounting the floppy explicitly as a vfat file system device,

e.g. mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

see if that enables you to mount it faster, as specifying "auto" can take some time.

... and Welcome to LQ !!

JimW · 09-02-2003, 12:11 AM

When I cat /etc/fstab, the info I get on floppies is this:

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

Is there anything obviolus in here that can have a bearing on my problem?

From what I can tell, the supermount is not working, or not working properly. When I'm working from OpenOffice, very frequently when I attempt to save to the floppy, the OO program shuts down, losing all my information.

JimW

jalal · 09-02-2003, 01:03 AM

did you try the explicit mount I mentioned above ?

We will come to know if you need to change anything in your fstab if the explicit mount did improve the performance.

JimW · 09-03-2003, 12:48 AM

I've been trying to respond several times, but can't seem to get through.

Will this change effect the ability to read Windows-formatted and Linux-formatted floppies?

Jimw

jalal · 09-03-2003, 01:29 AM

This will work with Windows formatted floppies only. It is just a test to see if the problem is with autodetection, or you have another problem.

JimW · 09-04-2003, 11:42 PM

Okay. As I've mentioned, I've been having an awful time getting myself properly logged on. Hopefully, I am now.

As I've mentioned before, I'm very much of a newbie at this all.

Below is the entry in /fstab for /mnt/floppy. I'm not sure just what I should do. Do I take the whole lot out and replace it with your suggested entry, or just part of it, and if so, which part?

Thanks

Jim

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

quatsch · 09-04-2003, 11:51 PM

backup your fstab and then, as root, do

supermount -i disable

this will make changes to the fstab to disable supermount. After this reboot and try to mount the floppy manually (you might have to be root for this) by

mnt /mnt/floppy

If this is faster than before, then it was a supermount problem. You can also try the explicit method jalal was suggesting.

DavidPhillips · 09-05-2003, 12:11 AM

try this in fstab

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,user,rw 0 0

JimW · 09-05-2003, 12:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by quatsch
backup your fstab and then, as root, do

supermount -i disable

this will make changes to the fstab to disable supermount. After this reboot and try to mount the floppy manually (you might have to be root for this) by

mnt /mnt/floppy

If this is faster than before, then it was a supermount problem. You can also try the explicit method jalal was suggesting.

At first it seemed so, but then I tried it through KDE and it was slow again. I went in through Konsole and unmounted it, got a message saying it wasn't mounted. Tried to mount it through Konsole, and got an error message:

mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified

I don't know what this signifies.

Jim