Unable to read floppy in version 10.04
 

When I click on Places>computer>floppy drive and have a disk in the drive, I get the message "Unable to mount floppy no media in drive".
Is it possible to use a floppy in version 10.04 or should I abandon the attempt? thanks, Rodney

Floppys should work. One of the reasons I gave up on Ubuntu, was you never really learn how things work in linux using buntus, or distros like it.

Here is what you need to mount your floppy. This assumes the hardware is working.

You need a mount point. I use /mnt/floppy/ If the directory floppy is not there, do a 'cd /mnt' and do a 'mkdir floppy' as root. On Bunuts put 'sudo' in front of the commands, and supply the root password when asked for it.

In /etc/fstab, make a backup of it before you edit this file. 'cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.back' will work. Now edit /etc/fstab with your favorite editor; I use nano. Add this line.

This assumes the device file for the floppy is fd0. Look in the dev directory for this file, it need to be there. If it is not, then the drive is not detected, or has been assigned a different name.

So, to get access to the floppy, put the diskette in the drive, open a konsole, and enter the command 'sudo mount /dev/fd0' and press enter. You should have access as a regular user at this point. You can close the terminal, and use what ever file manager you like.

When you are done, you should umount the diskette. 'sudo umount /dev/fd0' All commands without the quotes.

Thats it.