Get minimalist Linux to read floppy
 

Hello All,
I am a newbie myself, and I want to share some info I just learned about mounting floppies and reading off them when you have a minimalist version of Linux installed.
1) You may have to specify the mount point if you get "...not found in /etc/fstab..." or "...invalid block device..." messages when you try to "mount /dev/fd0". Please see below.
2)Your minimalist Linux may not support DOS formatted floppies. Please see below.

Mounting:
I am using a minimalist version of Slackware and it took me ages just to figure out how to mount the floppy drive and then more time just to read it.

This command mounted my floppy successfully: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

That command explicitly mounts the floppy drive to /mnt/floppy. Which of course assumes that the directory floppy exists in the directory /mnt. If it doesn't then you need to type mkdir floppy when you are in the /mnt directory. Thanks to other users for that tip.

Reading:
I also discovered after trying to "ls" the info off the freshly mounted floppy and waiting for ages as it tried to read while the floppy light stayed on, that my minimalist version of Slackware will not be able to read a floppy that is formated by DOS. I was trying to copy some files from a SuSe Linux machine to my minimalist machine with a floppy that was formated in DOS.

After I took the disk back to my SuSe machine and formated it for the ext2 file system, I was able to "ls" the floppy directory and run the program therein with my minimalist system.

I hope this helps someone.