Floppy drive doesn't work from file manager

[Alex Jones]

The floppy drive on my computer does not work from the file manager in Gnome. My computer is a Dell XPS 700. It can be mounted manually from the command line. Also, SD cards don't work either on a standard USB SD card reader. Both work in Slackware. The floppy drive is a standard floppy drive (not USB) and it works under Slackware and FreeDOS! Not being able to access the floppy drive is a major bug in any operating system. I might go back to Slackware if this bug isn't fixed.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Thank you for filing this bug against Ubuntu. Could you please provide some more information to help us:-

dmesg > dmesg.txt

Could you please also provide the last few lines of that output immediately after you plug your SD card reader in, and when you put some media in the reader.

[Alex Jones (blenheimears)]

I can't plug my SD card reader in, as it is internal, but still USB based. I have attached the dmesg when I put an SD card in the drive. Also, the floppy drive seems to sort of work after I installed the latest updates. It gives an error message but the floppy works nonetheless.

[Alex Jones (blenheimears)]

This is probably because multiple SCSI logical unit numbers (LUNs) are not enabled in the kernel. This feature is needed to use single devices that act as multiple virtual devices, such as multi-card readers. This is required even if the devices do not connect through SCSI, as the USB mass storage layer and most other storage layers such as SATA use SCSI emulation.

[Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h)]

@alex
the floppy issue is known, see bug #255651.
You have more than one issue reported in this bug report.
You should open different bugs for every different issue you have please.

So:

1) Change this bug title to report SD issue only, following bug #255651 for the floppy one.

OR

2) Set this bug as duplicate of #255651, and open a new bug report for the SD problem

[Nick_Hill (nick-nickhill)]

I can confirm this bug with 9.10 with a floppy drive, with a pre-release version as of 8th July 2009.

The floppy issue is not related to bug #255651 as it persists if floppy is added to /etc/modules.

Steps to replicate:
Boot machine. Floppy Drive isn't shown in nautilus.
lsmod | grep floppy shows no results.
try
mount /media/floppy
Gives result:
either mount: can't find /media/floppy in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
OR
mount: special device /dev/fd0 doesn't exist.

So to overcome these scenarios,
add line to fstab:
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
add line to /etc/modules:
floppy
reboot
the above is related to bug #255651

However, the following is unrelated to that bug:
Now that we have a module installed in the kernel and an appropriate fstab line, we can issue the command
mount /media/floppy
the floppy contents will appear when floppy is clicked in nautilus.
Click the unmoiunt icon in Nautilus, the floppy unmounts.
There is no way to mount the floppy in nautilus. Clicking on floppy drive will not cause the disc to mount.

Unless the user reverts to the command line and issues a mount command, the user will not be able to use the floppy disc with nautilus. The user can unmount the floppy within nautilus. I expect nautilus would have a method to issue a system mount command for the floppy as the user.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
 * Why do you think that's a nautilus issue?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Mikele (mikilion)]

Running the command "sudo nautilus" it is can mount and unmount the floppy drive to root's user.

[bwallum (rbw2)]

You are wrong to close this bug. I have it on four machines, 3 AMD64 and one i386. How can I help you with information?

[bwallum (rbw2)]

What I want to do, and I suspect many others want, is to click on the 'Floppy Drive' item in Places and have it show the contents of a floppy disk. Not too dissimilar from accessing a cd drive.

What I have at the moment is the 'Floppy Drive' list item in Places. However when clicking on it nothing happens.

How do I get the contents on a floppy disk to be shown by clicking on the the 'Floppy Drive' item in Places?

[ssivil (ssivil-48138)]

We are also unable to mount our floppy discs using Nautilus 2.28.1 (File Browser). The only way we can is to open a terminal and mount using /dev/fd0. This is awkward.

Also, if you search for "floppy" using either the "Ubuntu Software Center" or Synaptic, you will see "Gnome Desktop Utilities" show up in the Software Center, and "gnome-utils" show up in Synaptic. Both say that gfloppy is installed, but it is not. I'm not sure if this is why the floppy installation seems to be missing something for the floppy to be mounted through Nautilus or not.

[John (invent-write)]

Ubuntu team,
Doing all the things mentioned about, adding a line to fstab and floppy to modules has no effect.
Internal floppy drives are not being recognized, the media is not seen and even when things are done by way of nautilus to get Floppy0 to appear while the floppy can be opened and read it cannot be copied or written to.
Previously the internal floppy worked fine in previous versions however I think there was a time when it had the same problem with 9.04 however after one of the updates it went back to working on its own. Under 8.04 it always worked fine and for months with 9.04 it also worked fine. What ever it is I don't think the modules and fstab lines added have done anything to help fix it. In spite of some thinking floppy use is rare, that is I think an understatement as many desk top users still use floppy drives by the millions as well as some laptops that have internal floppy drives. What ever the problem is it must be deeper in the program.
Thanks

John Ryan

[John (invent-write)]

Also in the past versions of Ubuntu there was a programs called, FLOPPY in the repository it is not present in the 9.10 repository. Also the format floppy is not on the preference list of applications. For what its worth internal floppy drives will not function in the 64 bit version of 9.10, YET. I hope they will fix that inability to recognize hardware. Thank you

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

don't reopen closed bugs when you have a similar issue, open a new one rather

[bwallum (rbw2)]

Thanks for the advice Sebastien. Can you tell me if a new bug has been opened? If not would you like me to start one? Rgds, Bob

[Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h)]

Anyone having problem with floppy using Karmic Koala (with floppy module loaded), have a look at bug #441835.
Thank you.

[Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h)]

@G. R. Main
Please don't reopen closed bugs.
This bug was opened more than one year ago and not against Karmic.
As I already wrote, if you have an issue with floppy in Karmic, have a look at bug #441835.

Thank you.

[bwallum (rbw2)]

I'm still getting this problem in Maverick i386 and AMD64 Desktop. How can I help move this bug to a satisfactory conclusion please?