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Old 11-05-2006, 10:59 AM   #1
Sparkfist
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disk drive stuck in read-only


I'm sorry if this has been asked but I've just about lost it. I'm running Ubuntu 5.10 on a Gateway 700s, and I keep running into the problem of diskettes being read-only. I've tried changing the permissions (even through the terminal), and I can't find a way to change it. Is there an option on the system settings I need to change?

Thank you for any help.

P.S. I have been sure that the disk is not physically locked.
 
Old 11-05-2006, 11:34 AM   #2
PatrickNew
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Sounds like it isn't about who has file permissions, but rather that the disk is mounted read-only. I find it odd that such is the default. Here's how you fix it, if that is the problem.

(as root)
umount /dev/fd0
mount -o users,rw /dev/fd0

but to fix it more permanently, you need to edit the file /etc/fstab

Look for the line containing /dev/fd0 and you'll see about 3 collumns over (hopefully) 'ro' in a comma-separated list. Replace it with 'rw'. If neither is there, put rw in.
 
Old 11-09-2006, 12:27 PM   #3
Sparkfist
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Thank you for your help, but it seems my system is really confused. I looked at /etc/fstab and well the "rw" option for the floppy drive is in there. I even tried the mount command you suggested and it still mounted it as "read-only". I know the disks I've been trying to write to still work, the disk in the drive right now was written to last night via another computer. Could my floppy drive be hosed or is there just something in the system that is not configured or installed properly?
 
Old 11-09-2006, 02:36 PM   #4
PatrickNew
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Well, there are a couple possibilities, the least pleasant of which is that your floppy drive is shot. This problem is not with only one disc, but with all discs? This is not an intermittent problem, but a consistent one?

I notice you also use Mac OsX. Are your floppies formatted in Fat or HFS? Perhaps your kernel only has read support for HFS, much like my fedora kernel only has read support for ntfs.

I assume these disks are also read-only even when you are root? Can you post the commands you used to try to change the permisions? Thanks.

I suppose you could just have a floppy drive which has only partial linux support, but I've never heard of a floppy drive that didn't work.
 
Old 11-10-2006, 02:52 PM   #5
Sparkfist
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Well the thing about my Mac is that, well one it's not working right now, two is that as a G3 the only removable disk it has is a zip disk, not backwards compatible with floppy disk read/write.

As far as changing permissions with the disk, if it's mounted I generally do the chmod command. I've tried it both with the 774 and the u+w option/flag. Both of which I keep getting a responce that it can't be done as the disk is read-only.

Just to be sure if this is or isn't the floppy I'll try booting a bootable distro, likely DSL. That should confirm whether or not the floppy is trashed or not.

Thanks for the help.
 
Old 11-10-2006, 03:44 PM   #6
PTrenholme
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Um, I hope you did check that the "write protect" tab on the floppy was in the "unprotect" position. I.e., that the hole is covered by the tab. (If the tab is missing, you can cover the hole with a piece of tape.)
 
Old 11-18-2006, 06:27 PM   #7
Sparkfist
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PTrenholme
Um, I hope you did check that the "write protect" tab on the floppy was in the "unprotect" position. I.e., that the hole is covered by the tab. (If the tab is missing, you can cover the hole with a piece of tape.)
Yes I was sure that every disk I tried was unlocked.
 
  


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