# floppy / devfs weirdness

## Robert

Well I just happened to notice that I can no longer mount floppy discs. I get this error:

```

# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy -t vfat

# mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device 
```

Then I noticed that in /dev I have: 

```

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd -> /proc/self/fd

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root            8 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0 -> floppy/0

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1040 -> floppy/0u1040

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1120 -> floppy/0u1120

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1440 -> floppy/0u1440

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1600 -> floppy/0u1600

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1680 -> floppy/0u1680

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1722 -> floppy/0u1722

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1743 -> floppy/0u1743

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1760 -> floppy/0u1760

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1840 -> floppy/0u1840

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           13 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u1920 -> floppy/0u1920

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           12 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u360 -> floppy/0u360

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           12 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u720 -> floppy/0u720

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           12 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u800 -> floppy/0u800

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           12 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u820 -> floppy/0u820

lr-xr-xr-x    1 root     root           12 Dec  3 12:43 /dev/fd0u830 -> floppy/0u830

```

I recently recompiled 2.4.19 and thought maybe that I forgot to add floppy support or something, but I just carefully built the 2.4.20 and I have the same situation. Anyone have any idea why this might be happening?[/code]

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## lx

I get the same error if I haven't got a floppy inserted,  :Wink:  . Else it works just fine, although I just use mount /mnt/floppy (it's in /etc/fstab), well to be honest I never use floppies anymore. I'm running a 2.5.50 kernel however, I have compiled the 2.4.20, but I'm compiling a lot, so I'm not going to reboot.

Somebody with 2.4.20 installed and running could try, but I can't imagine something broken in the kernel, so it probably is a misconfiguration / bad floppy c.q. bad hardware,

Cya lX.

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## Robert

Doh! /me slaps himself in the head

The disc I was using had a slightly bent metal cover. I don't use floppies much either. Those strange device names threw me: I can't believe I neglected to even try another disc ;p

thanks

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## lx

 *Robert wrote:*   

> Doh! /me slaps himself in the head
> 
> The disc I was using had a slightly bent metal cover. I don't use floppies much either. Those strange device names threw me: I can't believe I neglected to even try another disc ;p
> 
> thanks

 

Well I was afraid you would slap me around the head saying that you had a disk inserted and tried some disks and nothing worked, but that goes to show that the most obvious things are the easiest to overlook. Just helped a friend with a windows problem stating that installing aspi-driver had broken his cdrom, almost wanted to give up, after some hours mailing, then I asked him if the IDE-cable was correctly connected, mmmm it wasn't,  aaarrrggghhhh.  :Wink: 

Cya lX.

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## pjp

Moved from Installing Gentoo.

 *Forums front page wrote:*   

> Installing Gentoo
> 
> If you've finished the install guide, look somewhere else. But if you're still working your way through it, or just need some info before you start your install, this is the place.

 

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## pilla

I had to recover some data from a NTFS partition (dead Win XP, some poor friends of mine).  The only way to get into the partition was using a Gentoo 1.2 boot cdrom. Then, I wanted to copy the files to a floppy, but I couldn't find it in /dev.... after some minutes trying to mount to every device there, I remembered to modprobe floppy.... damn, what a stupid waste of time...

Gentoo's cdroms have a thousand and one utilites  :Cool: 

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