mount -t auto does not automatically load modules

[Gustavo Carneiro]

1. Insert a floppy disk with a vfat/dos/whatever!=ext3 filesystem
2. Try to mount it with nautilus
3. Mount fails

However:
    sudo umount -tvfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/
works just fine.

Mounting vfat floppies should be supported! My friends will laugh at my
computer for not being able to open their floppies :|

PS: using hoary

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Assuming that the contents of the floppy aren't confidential, please run 'dd
if=/dev/fd0 of=floppy.dump' and attach floppy.dump to this bug. We can then have
a chance of fixing mount's autodetection.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

The output from "lshal" would be useful as well

[Gustavo Carneiro (gjc)]

Created an attachment (id=1220)
floppy.dump.bz2

[Gustavo Carneiro (gjc)]

Created an attachment (id=1221)
lshal.out

[Neil Woolford (neil-neilwoolford)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> 1. Insert a floppy disk with a vfat/dos/whatever!=ext3 filesystem
> 2. Try to mount it with nautilus
> 3. Mount fails
>

My friends will think I've broken their computers :(

Same symptom has appeared on every 386 system (four and counting...) that I've
tried Ubuntu Warty on. (I'm afraid I've set vfat not auto in fstab as a crude
fix in every case.)

One oddity that I did find was that *sometimes* auto does work.

If I recall correctly, I formatted a disc as vfat/dos from the gui floppy formatter,
intending to use it as a transfer disc between a windows system and Ubuntu. (My logic,
Ubuntu must be able to recognise its own vfat discs...)

After I had done this, Ubuntu/Nautilus was able to automount *other* vfat discs as well.

So;

1) Vfat discs wouldn't mount under the gui
2) I formatted a blank disc as vfat
3) Magically, not only the newly formatted disc but also other vfat discs mounted under the gui
4) Restart the computer, goto 1....

Neil

PS My first attempt to use Bugzilla - hope I haven't messed up!

[Neil Woolford (neil-neilwoolford)]

(In reply to comment #5)

PS To my previous post; I'd of course be happy to revisit this and do
more testing if it would be of help.

Neil

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > 1. Insert a floppy disk with a vfat/dos/whatever!=ext3 filesystem
> > 2. Try to mount it with nautilus
> > 3. Mount fails
> >
>
> My friends will think I've broken their computers :(
>
> Same symptom has appeared on every 386 system (four and counting...) that I've
> tried Ubuntu Warty on. (I'm afraid I've set vfat not auto in fstab as a crude
> fix in every case.)

"auto" will only work if the vfat module is loaded.

Perhaps it is possible for g-v-m/pmount to explicitly specify the filesystem
type (since hal already probes for it, if I'm not mistaken)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> "auto" will only work if the vfat module is loaded.

That indeed is the reason for the failure.

> Perhaps it is possible for g-v-m/pmount to explicitly specify the filesystem
> type (since hal already probes for it, if I'm not mistaken)

This is already done. If hal supplies a file system, it is used; if not, then
pmount tries "vfat, ext2, ..." in succession until the mount succeeds. This
automatically loads the modules as well. However, in this case pmount falls back
to mount since the floppy is in /etc/fstab.

I think the sanest solution would be to change the default fstab entry from
"auto" to "vfat,minix" (these are the only file systems I ever saw on floppies).

Gustavo, that's what you should do on your computer, too. Just replace "auto"
with "vfat".

[Gustavo Carneiro (gjc)]

I shouldn't do anything, it should Just Work! This must be fixed for all
users, not just for me...

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

What I was working on (but haven't had time yet) was fixing libblkid to
recognise the dump provided in comment #3 as a vfat filesystem, without creating
too many false positives in the process. This would make mount -t auto Just Work.

I do not understand why this bug has been assigned to gnome-volume-manager. It
is really not a bug in that stack; mount should be fixed.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> I shouldn't do anything, it should Just Work! This must be fixed for all
> users, not just for me...

No worries, we will fix that for everybody. The fstab change is just a quickfix
to make it work for you instantly, until we find a proper solution.

[Gustavo Carneiro (gjc)]

I just meant to say I don't much care about my particular case, I am worrying
about other users.

[ Although if my friends catch me doing 'sudo mount -tvfat /dev/fd0 /mnt'
they'll just mock me and say "this linux thing is so complicated, why don't you
just use windows?"... :P ]

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> What I was working on (but haven't had time yet) was fixing libblkid to
> recognise the dump provided in comment #3 as a vfat filesystem, without creating
> too many false positives in the process. This would make mount -t auto Just Work.
>
> I do not understand why this bug has been assigned to gnome-volume-manager. It
> is really not a bug in that stack; mount should be fixed.

I didn't realize mount even attempted to detect the filesystem itself. That
would seem to be a better solution, yes.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 14326 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Suzan (suzan72)]

> Gustavo, that's what you should do on your computer, too. Just replace "auto"
> with "vfat".

Hello guys! Time for a woman to reply... ;-)

Well, i see this is a relative old bug - but it's still there in breezy!

Mounting a floppy doesn't work. So i tried to change the floppy-line in the
fstab. I wrote

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 vfat rw,user,noauto 0 0

but it does't work! I tried it with

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 vfat umask=000 0 0

an i have no success!

I must confess, i didn't realize this bug very lately, because i don't use
floppys normally. But some users in the german forum are very annoyed about this
bug. An yes, this is a litte thing, which shocked new users. Ubuntu isn't be
able to mount simple floppys? :-(

Breezy is so cool, but this bug is so annoying! Anyone suggetions to fix this?

[Suzan (suzan72)]

It's me again!

So I found a solution in the ubuntu-forum. The package "pmount" must be updatet.

Download the *.deb from here:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/p/pmount/pmount_0.9.6-1_i386.deb

and install with

sudo dpkg -i pmount_0.9.6-1_i386.deb

And it works!

This package is from dapper, isn't it? Hm... in my opinion, this shoud be an
update for breezy, too. It's fundamental to autmount a floppy-disk. Maybe in 2
years no-one will be use floppys, but in this time, it's still in use.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

right, this was fixed recently in dapper. I already asked the backports guys for
a breezy backport, it will be available soon.

This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 36249.

[Julian Robbins (joolsr)]

Well, I tried it in dapper as of 16th may 06 with all updates, and still the same old problem. Auto doesnt work, but vfat does.

I wish devs would take thsi more seriously, just because not everyone uses the nice USB memory sticks, users like charities with old floppy disks, will never take up Ubuntu.

<end of rant>

[tuxo (beat-fasel)]

As of 10.2.2007, after two years of the original bug report, this bug is still not fixed. Not possible to read floppies on several of my computers running Dapper and Edgy.

sudo umount -tvfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/

Works, but this is not an acceptable practice on a desktop machine for normal users.

[magilus (magilus)]

Works fine for me. Please try on a Edgy livecd. If it still occurs, please try to execute "sudo modprobe floppy".

If you do not have any success, you should reopen bug 36249.