Diskette drive doesn't work

[Yinepu]

I can't seem to get either my internal or external diskette drive to work; the drives show up in the "Computer" folder, but do nothing when they are clicked on. I had this problem when I used Ubuntu 12.04 too. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[sglafata]

What "Computer" folder? We need a little more information here. I am assuming your reference to an external drive is via USB. If so, does it recognize the drive when you plug it in? Try typing: 'lsusb' at the command prompt. Is the drive listed? Have you tried to check drakhardware in MCC? You do not give us much information to go off of here.

[Yinepu]

The "Computer" folder is the directory which displays the drives; it is under the "Places" menu by default and I'm pretty sure it's on the desktop too. If you're using GNOME it can also be accessed through the file browser near the menus. The drive is recognized and is displayed as a floppy drive in "computer", and the motor in the drive checks for disks.

What is the command prompt? I tried that command in the Terminal, but it's not finding the command.
I'm also not sure what MCC is either.

[alf]

What is the command prompt? I tried that command in the Terminal, but it's not finding the command.
I'm also not sure what MCC is either.

Well, "command prompt" is the Terminal, but for many commands it is necessary to become 'root' to execute, and "lsubs" belongs to these commands.
MCC aka "Mageia Control Center" should be found as "Configure Your Computer" in menu within tools submenu.

[Yinepu]

Ah, thanks!!

[JoesCat]

Based on the replies I'm guessing you are using Gnome, but if you were running I'd point out a few things you could try.
I'll assume your taskbar is configured somewhat the same.

If you have an external floppy diskette drive, you could plug it in after you login, and up on the right side of the screen, you'll have a pop-up showing recently plugged-in devices. If so, you can select the floppy drive from the list. Otherwise, you can take a look at the USB symbol on the bottom right of the taskbar to bring-up the list.

When it pops-up, select file manager. When that happens, you should be able to read/write to the floppy drive.

If you go to the KDE System settings, you should be able to preconfigure KDE to automatically login external drives for you. May be useful.

Other things to look for:
What I've noted with the latest distro versions is that the floppy drive is now more normally mounted in /media instead of /mnt

If you begin a terminal Konsole shell, you can take a look in /media, my suggestion is use the -l option when using ls to see ownership

Code: Select all

[ ~]$ ls -l /media/
drwx------ 3 you  audio 7168 Dec 31  1969 DM60_DISK_2/
[ ~]$

What you may notice is that the ownership belongs only to one person if you've mounted an external USB floppy drive. This may be part of your problem. Check to see if it is you or root that owns it. You'll notice in my example above, ownership is me, plus group 'audio', but audio has no permissions to access it anyways.

You could probably configure other options with MCC (Mageia Control Center), by looking in the hardware tab, and looking at configuring the floppy hardware.

For the internal floppy drive, you either go into the MCC, hardware, floppy, and configure it there to give permissions for other users, or you can modify /etc/fstab so that other users can use it.

In terms of modifying /etc/fstab, currently, the computer I'm using at the moment does not have a floppy drive, but you will first need to identify what piece of hardware is the floppy drive, then modify /etc/fstab accordingly. These are some 'old' examples from prior installations to give you some ideas of what needs doing. For example, a combination floppy drive that has high density 100M or 120M floppy disks is also seen as a harddrive 'hdX' or 'sdX', you would append:

Code: Select all

/dev/hdc        /mnt/floppy120  supermount user,exec,dev,suid,rw,fs=vfat 0 0


A more normal floppy drive would be more liker appending:

Code: Select all

/dev/fd0        /mnt/floppy     supermount owner,noexec,suid,ro,fs=vfat 0 0
#/dev/fd0       /mnt/floppy     vfat nosuid,noauto,nodev,user 0 0


At the terminal, you can get more help by typing 'man mount' and/or 'man fstab' then press esc or q to exit those help manuals.
Where most problems seem to happen is ownership, and you can check that out using 'ls -l' to see how ownership is configured. MCC also has a graphical method to add yourself to additional groups like audio or cdrom id root is owner, but cdrom or another group is also a group user.

[wilcal]

FWIW I've a system with M2B2 installed and a floppy
drive. A traditional one with a hardware interface.
The floppy is the 1st boot device and does so with
FreeDOS installed. 2nd boot device is the DVD drive
and the 3rd is the HD. All devices work fine.

When M2B2 is running KDE4, Gnome & /media/floppy
see the drive but cannot see the files on the diskette.
I'm not sure this is a big issue as most MoBo's these
days don't even have a Floppy drive interface any more.

Maybe someone here can try a USB floppy drive and
see how that works.

Booting the latest Live-CD Puppy Linux on this
same system Puppy sees the floppy drive and
the files on the diskette.

So I'd say M2B2 can't see the files on a properly
mounted floppy drive diskette.

[JoesCat]

When M2B2 is running KDE4, Gnome & /media/floppy
see the drive but cannot see the files on the diskette.

If you went to a Konsole terminal and typed in ls -l /media/ you will probably see settings like:
rwx------ root root /media/floppy
then this would mean, yes, you could see the floppy drive, but you have no permission to enter, read, or execute any files on the floppy drive.
What needs to be fixed is the permissions when the floppy is found and the fstab file is written for your install.

This is a recurring problem that's been repeating in Mandriva for 2009, 2010... and would also affect Mageia.
If you have a working floppy on your computer, I would highly recommend filing a bug report and indicating it to Mageia 2 Beta so that the eventual Mageia2 distro has a fix.

Maybe someone here can try a USB floppy drive and
see how that works.

See example above for a USB floppy drive "after" it is plugged-in after you have logged-in. Permissions are correct, however, the permissions may be incorrect for a system that was powered-up with the USB drive plugged-in before power-up. I haven't tried that.

Booting the latest Live-CD Puppy Linux on this
same system Puppy sees the floppy drive and
the files on the diskette.

is a good indication that the hardware works fine, but the permissions on Mageia are messed up and need fixing.

Are you willing to send in a bug report?

[wilcal]

Are you willing to send in a bug report?

Just did a search on Bugzilla on it and found this:

https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4642

I think this bug report properly describes
what's going on here. I confirm the /dev/fd0 entry
in /etc/fstab so I think 4642 is best to handle
the situation.

Unless it's a simple fix I'm not so sure it's
all that important.

[linuxero]

I have just plugged in my USB Iomega Floppy Plus. The system does not auto-mount the diskette. I am using KDE. I have to mount it myself. I even tried with Linux Formatted diskette, not FAT, the same goes..