# floppy mounting

## billium

Linux aurora 3.7.1-gentoo #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 11:12:50 GMT 2012 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

I'm having problems directly mounting /dev/fd0.  No errors, or dmesg.

```
aurora billy # mount -v -r -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/

mount: /dev/fd0 mounted on /mnt/floppy

aurora billy # ls -la /mnt/floppy/

total 8

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 22 18:05 .

drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Dec 22 18:02 ..

aurora billy # umount /mnt/floppy/

umount: /mnt/floppy/: not mounted

```

```

aurora billy # dd if=/dev/fd0 of=fddos7.img count=2880 conv=noerror,sync

2880+0 records in

2880+0 records out

1474560 bytes (1.5 MB) copied, 49.151 s, 30.0 kB/s

aurora billy # mount -t vfat -o loop fddos7.img /mnt/floppyaurora

billy # ls -la /mnt/floppy/

total 1421                                                                      

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   7168 Jan  1  1970 .                                    

drwxr-xr-x 7 root root   4096 Dec 22 18:02 ..                                   

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  15252 Apr 23  1999 ATTRIB.EXE                           

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     19 May 24  2005 AUTOEXEC.BAT                         

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  28096 Jun  2  2000 CHKDSK.EXE                           

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  93890 Apr 23  1999 COMMAND.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    120 May 24  2005 CONFIG.SYS

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  19083 Apr 23  1999 DELTREE.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  21975 Apr 23  1999 DISKCOPY.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  15495 Apr 23  1999 DOSKEY.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  69902 Jun  2  2000 EDIT.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  10790 Apr 23  1999 EDIT.HLP

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 125495 Apr 23  1999 EMM386.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  93242 Apr 23  1999 EXTRACT.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  63916 Apr 23  1999 FDISK.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  49575 Apr 23  1999 FORMAT.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  33191 Apr 23  1999 HIMEM.SYS

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 222390 Apr 23  1999 IO.SYS

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   9324 Apr 23  1999 LABEL.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  32146 Apr 23  1999 MEM.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  10471 Apr 23  1999 MORE.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  27299 Apr 23  1999 MOVE.EXE

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root    249 Apr 23  1999 MSBATCH.INF

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  25473 Apr 23  1999 MSCDEX.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      9 Apr 25  2000 MSDOS.SYS

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  41302 Apr 23  1999 OAKCDROM.SYS

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 143818 Apr 23  1999 SCANDISK.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   7326 Oct 30  2001 SCANDISK.INI

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 165502 Apr 23  1999 SCANREG.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  45379 Apr 23  1999 SMARTDRV.EXE

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  18967 Apr 23  1999 SYS.COM

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  41472 Apr 23  1999 XCOPY32.MOD

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   3878 Apr 23  1999 XCOPY.EXE

```

Don't know what the total 8 means.

I don't use floppies that often so cannot say when things went wrong.  The drive is obviously o.k. as shown above plus I spent an hour in DOs 6.2 copying floppies.  A USB floppy drive works o.k. as /dev/sd*.

If anybody has any pointers on this I would be grateful.

----------

## eccerr0r

The total 8 just means 4096+4096 for the . and .. entries.

I think the floppy driver has some bit rot in it...  Maybe some SMP issues... Don't know.

Subscribing, I had issues with this too with my floppy drives.  Seems some older versions of Linux seem to work better (2.4.*).

----------

## wcg

kernel 3.3.8 was the first one for me where I could not

mount the floppy drive. 3.2.12 was the last one where

I could. (I did not run any of the kernels in between.)

In 3.3.8, CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD was missing in the kernel .config.

I searched all through make menuconfig for it, could

not find it, but I did find it in a Kconfig file in the kernel

source tree. I had the impression that it was expected

to be automatically enabled if CONFIG_BLK_DEV was

enabled, but that did not happen.

In 3.5.7, CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD is back and enabled,

but mount fails to recognize an ext2 filesystem on it.

(Made when 3.2.12 was last booted, with grub stages

and some kernels on it.)

edit: With grub stages and grub.conf on it. Kernels

are on boot partition. (It has been awhile since

kernels fit on floppy disks.) /edit.

Explicitly passing "-t ext2" to mount does not let it mount the disk.

Someone asked about it on the kernel list, responses

tended toward "why would you want it".

----------

## billium

Thanks for answers.

I wonder if it will ever be fixed, at least there are workarounds.

I hate the "why would you want it" answers there is still a lot of old expensive technology out there, although I understand the need to move on.

I'm embarrassed I couldn't work out the 4096+4096   :Shocked:  .

----------

## wcg

It is a question of who has time to maintain it. If no one

with the programming skills to maintain the driver

actually uses this device or has some other reason

to prioritize it, then they always have other things

on their todo list that they consider a higher priority

use of their time than keeping the floppy driver current

with changes in the kernel.

(It's not like millions of users are clamoring for a working

floppy disk drive device driver.)

----------

## eccerr0r

Maybe it's time for me to study that driver a bit... I'd hate to see legacy devices go like this too...  However the infrastructure that the floppy needs (DMA, etc) is tricky to keep up with...

----------

## rickj

I suspect this is not a kernel issue, but a udev problem.

I run two Dell GX270 x86 systems. Both are running kernel 3.5.7. On the system running udev-171-r9, floppies work as expected. On the system running udev-197-r3, floppies are broken exactly as in the first post.

Raised Bug 453744.

Late breaking news: a third Dell GX270 running linux-3.7.0-hardened and udev-171-r9 has full floppy function.

----------

## rickj

Bug 453744 ended up as a duplicate of bug 338185. It was not udev, but udisks that was at fault. See the bugs for the gory details.

Update to  sys-fs/udisks-1.0.4-r5, or sys-fs/udisks-2.0.91, and all will be well.

My thanks to Samuli Suominen for the fix

----------

## rickj

Experiment shows that with XFCE, it is not enough to add udisks2. You need sys-fs/udisks-1.0.4-r5 for floppy function.

----------

## monicajae

floppy  -- is that hardware?

----------

## SamuliSuominen

 *rickj wrote:*   

> Experiment shows that with XFCE, it is not enough to add udisks2. You need sys-fs/udisks-1.0.4-r5 for floppy function.

 

In fact, if you build gnome-base/gvfs with USE="udev udisks" instead of USE="udev gdu" it will use sys-fs/udisks:2 instead of sys-fs/udisks:0,

and then if you also disable USE="udisks" for xfce-extra/xfce4-power-manager so that it doesn't pull in sys-fs/udisks:0 back,

you can remove entire sys-fs/udisks:0 from the system

As in, Xfce will use gnome-base/gvfs and works with whichever way it's built

But indeed, if sticking to the obsolete USE combination of "udev gdu -udisks", then you need the -r5 from the old SLOT

Hope that clears things up

----------

## rickj

Yes monicajae, and those of us who graduated from cards or paper tape thought it was wonderful. 

ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

----------

## eccerr0r

I wonder when the same question be posed for CD's...  surprising how fast this goes...

----------

## wcg

A floppy disk is sometimes still the fastest way to flash

firmware on a motherboard that will not boot from

a USB stick. (You could boot from a cd-r, but it still

has to load DOS, too, because that is the operating

environment that the flash firmware program was

coded to run in.)

----------

