I'm a newbie, using Mandrake 9.2 and KDE. I have a modem driver on a floppy that I want to install. I have created a dir called modem, have tried to copy the floppy to this directory by typing cd modem, then cp mnt/floppy/modemfile.zip. I get a message to try cp --help, but can't find my solution there. I would appreciate specific details on what commands to type and where. Don't assume I know anything, cause that's about where I am.

Have you mounted your floppy? If not, type: (according to your text that seems to be your mountpoint for the floppy disk).

Now copies the file in question to your home directory.

you need the leading slash, and you also have to tell where to put the file. so if the directory "modem" is in /home, the command would be:

cp /mnt/floppy/modemfile.zip /home/modem

I tried both suggestions without sucess. What I'm trying to do is install a modem driver from the floppy and then unzip it. The process seems to be to tell Mandrake to go to the floppy and install it in file 'modem. Do I need to describe what's on the floppy. The name 'modemsite' that I used is from the web site. Also I've had .zip in the initial command. I suppose that's to recognoze for later unzipping. I'm asking these things to understand what's happening. It also seems there should be a separation between telling it to access the floppy and the destination. If I run that string all together with no space, I get a message "missing destination file. If I space the destination, the message is "cannot stat '/mnt/floppy/modemsite.zip' . m no such file exists.
I know this didn't work either, but what's wrong with this command, or I should say, please corrct this:
cp /mnt/floppy /home/carl/modem

Assuming I get the floppy copied to 'modem,
1.how, then do I unzip it
2. will the Internet connection process detect that the modem driver is where it should be?

depending on what it's zipped with, you should be able to unzip it easily, "unzip <file.zip>" for example. but first things first.

you ask what's wrong with the command. that command has no file attached to it -- or rather, it is saying to copy file "floppy" to directory "modem." i don't think you want to do that.

if you are sure your floppy is mounted and the file "modemfile.zip" exists on it, then you should be able to copy the file to your home directory (or in this case to a subdirectory in /home). to mount the floppy, type:

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

(note that's a zero in fd0, and not a capital O, and that there's a space after fd0.)

i think when the drive is mounted properly, you will then be able to copy the file using this command:

cp /mnt/floppy/modemfile.zip /home/modem

where "modem" is a directory you have created in your /home directory (to create it, simply type mkdir /home/modem).

if you still can't copy the file, post what you get when you go to /mnt/floppy and type ls -l.

Thanks Synaptical. I finally got there by going to Floppy ls-l as you suggested. That gave me the name of the floppy which was hsfmodem folllowed by 53 more characters, then zip. I typed all that in my cp command - and in the unzip command and now have that driver in the modem file. That's one hurdle. Now I'm struugling wiht the modem and the Internet connection, but think it best if I open a new thread for that, like Install Modem & Internet connection

great, glad you got over that hurdle, at least.

and here's a tip: you can just type in the first few characters of a file -- or even just the first character, if it's the only file in the directory that begins with that character -- and then hit the tab key. linux has "autocompletion" on the command line, and it will fill in the rest of the file name for you. (works with directories, too. ) if there's more than one file that begins the same way, hitting tab twice will give you a list so you can just type to the point that they're different and hit tab. no more typing in 53 character file names!