Mounting Floppies

[Basil Chupin]

On 03/11/2010 18:58, David Bowskill wrote:
> Hello All
> I was cleaning up when I came across some old floppies with stuff I
> wished to read.
>
> Ubuntu 10.04 would not mount the floppy although the drive light cam on
> for a short while and the drive 'clicked'.
>
> The file /etc/fstab includes the following entry:
>
> /dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8
> 0       0
>
> when issuing the command:
>
>          mount /dev/fd0
>
> the drive clicks and the terminal reports :-
>
>      mount: block device /dev/fd0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
>
> Then examining the file  /etc/mtab, it shows no entry for the floppy.
>
> Issuing the command umount /etc/fd0 the terminal reports:-
>
>      umount: /dev/fd0 is not mounted (according to mtab)
>
> I cannot read the floppy - it is not mounted although it was reported as
> being so.
>
> Any ideas ??
>
> Thanks
> David
>    

Yes. A known problem but there is a solution. Can't remember what it is 
but there was a discussion on this in Ubuntu which I started at the end 
of September. You can either check the archives, or check Launchpad or 
wait (and remind me! :-) ) to find what I wrote at the time.

The bottom line to all this is that none of the devs use computers with 
floppy drives and so they cannot produce the answer - nor really care 
because nobody is supposed to have computers which use floppies anymore 
:-( - but there IS an answer; I needed to boot the system using a floppy 
and started the thread beginning with, "WTF?! NO floppy in Lucid or in 
Meerkat". The "fix" is reasonably easy, and my floppy drive now is 
functional.

BC

-- 
Gumperson's Law: The probability of anything happening is in
inverse proportion to its desirability.