Hi,
Lately i am having problems with mounting my floppy drive.All along it was fine but when i was trying to create a boot disk i think i messed something up.Now when linux boots it mounts /mnt/floppy in /etc/fstab under /dev/sda where as before it was mounting it under /dev/fd0.Even though whilst mounted under /dev/sda i can read what is on the floppy but cant write to it.So now i tried editing /etc/fstab to mount /etc/fd0 like it was before but after doing that and trying to mount it i get the error /dev/fd0 is not a valid device file.Having googled for a while i decided to make a new device file using the mknod command but i still get that error.Any idea what i can try now?
I really dont have a clue.
Cheers.

Try this:
Post your fstab file.
I think some translation is getting lost in your question. 'devices' are mounted, '/dev/fd0', and where it is mounted is, '/mnt/floppy' or something similiar depending on your flavor/version/distro.
This is what my mount command in MDK 9.1 looks like:
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
yours will probably be different.

Can you post the following results:
ls -al /dev/fd0
ls -al /dev/sda
doing a fresh reboot, please post anything concerning 'fd0' and 'sda', and any mounting problems, do a 'dmesg'.
You are booting from the floppy, or just have a floppy disk with some files on it that you are trying to mount?
Read your /var/log/messages file and see what 'errors' you might think are important concerning fd0, post them here.

prompt = toti

Thanks for responding faheyd.Here is all that information you asked for.

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/dos ntfs auto 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda /mnt/floppy1 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0



[root@localhost ppp]# ls -al /dev/fd0
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 0 Oct 3 20:09 /dev/fd0



[root@localhost ppp]# ls -al /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 8, 0 Aug 31 2002 /dev/sda

dmesg output

Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1270
SCSI device sda: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4

/var/log/messages output

Oct 9 19:56:01 localhost insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/sound/nvaudio.o: insmod sound-slot-1 failed
Oct 9 19:56:01 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-1-0
Oct 9 20:06:49 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-2
Oct 9 20:06:49 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-2
Oct 9 20:07:06 localhost kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Oct 9 20:07:06 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1270
Oct 9 20:07:07 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 2880 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB)
Oct 9 20:07:07 localhost kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
Oct 9 20:07:08 localhost kernel: sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4

/etc/mtab

/dev/hda6 / ext3 rw 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/dos ntfs rw 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
/dev/sda /mnt/floppy1 vfat rw 0 0



By the way i tried changing fstab to use /dev/fd0 rather then /dev/sda but still no luck even trying this.As i said before i did find that while mounted at /dev/sda the floppy drive does react but the information when writing to it gets corrupted for some reason.
Thanks again for responding and hope you can help.Feel free to ask for more information if required.

Wow, I just get more confused the more I looked at what you posted. I may need a 'guru' to step in here.
Let's confirm a few things:
1. Please once again do a 'dmesg' upon boot, and see what reads out for fd0 (near the top of the output) ?
2. Confirm you have no 'real' scsi controllers/devices on your system?
3. Your fd0 really is a floppy drive plugged into your motherboards floppy controller port?
4. Change your fstab to mount /dev/fd0 and then manually mount the /dev/fd0 to /mnt/floppy1 and paste the exact error here.

Then, we can go forward. This looks like it's going to be quite a challenge, but we have the GURUs here that can do it.

If things get too weird or difficult, you may have to backup your 'personal' data and just reinstall the system.

By the way faheyd im using a laptop with an internal floppy drives.
Thanks again.

Heres is the full dmesg output
===============================================================================

Linux version 2.4.18-14 (bhcompile@stripples.devel.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) #1 Wed Sep 4 13:35:50 EDT 2002
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f000 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001ffb0800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000001ffb0800 - 0000000020000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000feda0000 - 00000000fee00000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffb00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
511MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 130992
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 126896 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro BOOT_FILE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1994.187 MHz processor.
Speakup v-1.00 CVS: Tue Jun 11 14:22:53 EDT 2002 : initialized
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 3961.24 BogoMIPS
Memory: 511160k/523968k available (1326k kernel code, 10244k reserved, 999k data, 212k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
ramfs: mounted with options: <defaults>
ramfs: max_pages=64167 max_file_pages=0 max_inodes=0 max_dentries=64167
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: bfebf9ff 00000000 00000000, vendor = 0
CPU: L1 I cache: 0K, L1 D cache: 8K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After vendor init, caps: bfebf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: bfebf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: bfebf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.00GHz stepping 07
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfc97e, last bus=2
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Unknown bridge resource 2: assuming transparent
PCI: Discovered primary peer bus 08 [IRQ]
PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX [8086/24cc] at 00:1f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:00.0
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
speakup: initialized device: /dev/synth, node (MAJOR 10, MINOR 25)
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS not found.
Starting kswapd
VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0 initialized
pty: 2048 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.6
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1f.5
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
oprofile: can't get RTC I/O Ports
block: 992 slots per queue, batch=248
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 00 device f9, VID=8086, DID=24ca
PCI: Enabling device 00:1f.1 (0005 -> 0007)
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:00.0
PCI_IDE: chipset revision 3
PCI_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xbfa0-0xbfa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xbfa8-0xbfaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
hda: FUJITSU MHS2060AT, ATA DISK drive
hdc: MATSHITA CD-RW/DVD-ROM UJDA740, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 117210240 sectors (60012 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=7296/255/63
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 < hda5 hda6 >
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
NET4: Frame Diverter 0.46
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 127k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 212k freed
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1d.7
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.7 to 64
hcd.c: ehci-hcd @ 00:1d.7, Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller
hcd.c: irq 11, pci mem e0848c00
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ehci-hcd.c: restricting 64bit DMA mappings to segment 0 ...
ehci-hcd.c: USB 2.0 support enabled, EHCI rev 1. 0
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 6 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 13:44:31 Sep 4 2002
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1d.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 01:00.0
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.0 to 64
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xbf80, IRQ 11
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1d.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:01.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:01.1
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.1 to 64
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xbf40, IRQ 11
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1f.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:00.0
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.2 to 64
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xbf20, IRQ 11
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/1, assigned device number 2
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.18, 14 May 2002 on ide0(3,6), internal journal
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 3, frame# 1014
Adding Swap: 265032k swap-space (priority -1)
usb_control/bulk_msg: timeout
input0: USB HID v1.00 Mouse [Sunplus Sunplus USB Mouse] on usb2:2.0
NTFS driver v1.1.22 [Flags: R/O MODULE]
NTFS: Warning! NTFS volume version is Win2k+: Mounting read-only
ohci1394: $Revision: 1.101 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 02:01.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1d.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:01.0
ohci1394_0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[11] MMIO=[faffd800-faffe000] Max Packet=[2048]
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: MATSHITA Model: CDRW/DVD UJDA740 Rev: 1.03
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
ieee1394: Host added: Node[00:1023] GUID[424fc0000100dc10] [Linux OHCI-1394]
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
parport0: irq 7 detected
Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
options: [pci] [cardbus] [pm]
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 02:01.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1d.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 02:01.1
Yenta IRQ list 06f8, PCI irq11
Socket status: 30000086
cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x378-0x37f 0x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
Intel 810 + AC97 Audio, version 0.22, 13:45:06 Sep 4 2002
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.5
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1f.6
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1f.5 to 64
i810: Intel ICH4 found at IO 0xbc40 and 0xb800, IRQ 11
i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 6 channels.
i810_audio: Defaulting to base 2 channel mode.
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x8384:0x7650 (Unknown)
i810_audio: AC'97 codec 0 supports AMAP, total channels = 2
ac97_codec: AC97 Modem codec, id: 0x5349:0x4c21 (Unknown)
i810_audio: timed out waiting for codec 1 analog ready.
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISOFS: changing to secondary root
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
Nvidia + AC97 Audio, version 0.24, 11:13:53 Sep 14 2003
Nvaudio: in Funcction Nvaudio_init_module
AC97 modem device forced to iobase_0=0xb400, iobase_1=0xb080, irq=11
PCTel driver version 0.9.7-6 [5.05c-4.27.215 (09-14-2001)] (MR) (2002-01-31) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI AUDIO_ROUTING[INTEL] enabled.
PCTel driver built on [Linux 2.4.18-14 i686 i686 "2.4.18-14 <132114>"] with gcc-3.2.
ttyS15 at 0xb400 (irq = 11) is a PCTel
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1f.6
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1f.5
PCTel initialization. Country code is 6.
AC'97 (Modem) Warning: Primary or Secondary Codec not ready - timeout
AC'97 (Modem) Warning: Primary or Secondary Codec not ready - timeout
CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California
PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
divert: not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device ppp0
PPP Deflate Compression module registered
============================================================================

Hers is the output when manually mounting fd0

[root@localhost root]# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy1
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

And this is the error seen in /var/log/messages each time i try to mount

Oct 10 18:13:01 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-2

==============================================================================

Hi All,
I'm not entirely on solid ground here, and the output of dmesg, -

floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 < hda5 hda6 >
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
NET4: Frame Diverter 0.46
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide

Is not something I'm familiar with as I always see fd0 assigned on boot up, but this is a laptop, so maybe this is normal? Can someone look at the previous posts on this discussion and help me out, as my next suggestion to the user would be:
Re-install.

I think it's normal to see floppy assigned further down - it happens on both my laptop and desktop.

Is the floppy drive still working? I mean 'no floppy controllers found' doesn't sound very promising... If you dual boot, you could see if you can get the floppy to work from another distro or win. Or if you have some bootable floppy (dos, linux, whatever), see if you can boot from the floppy.

Yeah the floppy works perfectly fine under windows XP
its just under Redhat that i have trouble but as i said before the strange thing is when mounted as device /dev/sda i can actually read from floppy discs but not write to them and has nothing to do with the permissions i have set.

The dmesg output is very strange: almost all devices allocated to IRQ 11, only a couple to IRQ 7, and the others untouched! Weird... I'd have to agree that the lack of mention of successful detection of a floppy controller doesn't look good. prompt, what brand is the laptop?

Its a dell inspiron 8500 and there shouldnt be a problem according to this page which doesnt mention any.


http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/.../Inspiron8500/

http://ltswww.epfl.ch/~dsanta/resour...ll-i8500-linux
On that link: "USB floppy drive
When the USB floppy is plugged it is recognized as a SCSI device on /dev/sda. However, the automatic management of /etc/fstab is not performed since it is not recognized by the updfstab utility. I added

device floppy {
match floppy "USB UF"
}

to the end of the /etc/updfstab.conf file and now the ownership of the device file and /etc/fstab is performed. After connecting the USB floppy drive the floppy can be mounted on /mnt/floppy as usual. "

maybe trying mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy would work??