I have recently tried the latest Ubuntu 9.10 on a spare computer but cannot get the floppy drive to work. Clicking on the Floppy (in Places) it does not appear possible to mount it. The only message appearing is "re-scan floppy".

I do not understand what scan or re-scan floppy means.

An earlier version of Ubuntu also had trouble with the floppy drive but I found a solution to that on the Ubuntu forum. That solution, of course, doesn't work with 9.10.

The matter is not urgent but if a solution is available I will upgrade otherwise I must stay with my earlier edition of Ubuntu as I have a lot of data kept on floppies.

My apologies if this, my first post, is somewhat mundane. Tridentowner.

Hello,

what is the output of

The tool recommended in another thread : pysdm
( sudo apt-get install pysdm ) doesn't seem to work.

This does : mount /media/floppy0

It even puts a floppy icon on the Desktop. .. .. .. ..
( Ubuntu 9.10 ).
.....

1 members found this post helpful.

The following URL may have the answers you are looking for:

How to mount and format floppy disks in Ubuntu 9.10

cheers...

The output was
'floppy does not exist'.

I'm still flummoxed about the Scan and re-scan floppy.

My apologies for the delay in replying. Tridenowner.

Did you try the suggestions given in the URL cited in message #4 above?

*

May be read post # 3 again ..

mount /media/floppy0

My abject apologies knudfl for not thanking you for your post # 3 which I tried sometime ago. It worked as you predicted and put an icon on the desktop.

However, it still seems a bit cock-eyed having to use the command line to get the floppy drive up and running each time when the floppy is at 'Places' on the desktop. The Scan and Re-scan still remains a mystery.

I'm not sure whether what I'm seeking is possible with this particular distribution (Ubuntu 9.10 and also LinuxMint 8)?
Tridentowner.

I think there are some contradictions :

Ubuntu decided, that nobody uses floppy any more. AFAIK.
But it still shows up in Gnome.

In Ubuntu 9.10 ( and in the may be similar 'Mint )
it's not an impossible thing. Much worse in Ubuntu 8.10 , 9.04
where you had no floppy module loaded and no /dev/floppy.

So you had to do 1) MAKEDEV floppy and 2) modprobe floppy,
before you even had a chance to mount it.

So in that way the latest version has become easier.
.....

Many thanks Knudfl. Your explanation is very convincing. It looks as though I shall have to follow the herd and ditch my floppies in due course.
Tridentowner.

Hello there,

Though post # 3 worked quite satisfactorily for sometime now I am getting strange outputs like
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified

Forgive me for my ignorance as I am new user and would like to learn it to make full use of it.

Thanks in advance for help

@ sksinha , welcome to LQ. .. ..

May be try something like : mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-device-12760/

Google .. mount /dev/fd0 /floppy vfat ..
.. Example
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-3494.html
..

1 members found this post helpful.

@knudfl,
thanx for the quick reply..
the problem was resolved by restarting the system...

thanx for such a live support forum!!!