floppy mounting

billium · Apprentice Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 185

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.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 10:32 pm Post subject:

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.*).
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wcg · Guru Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 588

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".
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billium · Apprentice Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 185

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

.

wcg · Guru Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 588

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.)
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eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:29 pm Post subject:

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...
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rickj · Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 11:44 pm Post subject:

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 · Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2013 6:10 pm Post subject:

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 · Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 10:09 pm Post subject:

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 · Guru Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 363 Location: Dorset, VT

floppy -- is that hardware?

SamuliSuominen · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:47 am Post subject:

rickj · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 8:39 pm Post subject:

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 · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 10:32 pm Post subject:

I wonder when the same question be posed for CD's... surprising how fast this goes...
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wcg · Guru Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 588

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.)
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