Ubuntu 8.10 No floppy drive is available

[Derek Bollam]

8.10 is installed and working fine, however I am unable to find or use the floppy drive. Can see no trace of it showing in /etc/fstab.
modprobe floppy will bring it to life but would prefer the way it was in 7.10.
Has anybody found the fix for this problem?
Derek

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/yelp
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: yelp 2.24.0-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: yelp
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic x86_64

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 255651. Please feel free to report any other bugs you find.

[Derek Bollam (dbollam-deactivatedaccount)]

Chris Coulson wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 255651 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/255651
>
> Thank you for your bug report. This bug has already been reported and is
> a duplicate of bug 255651. Please feel free to report any other bugs you
> find.
>
> ** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
> Sourcepackagename: None => linux
> Status: New => Invalid
>
> ** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 255651
> floppy disk drive not detected (module not loaded) in Intrepid Alpha 4 kernel 2.6.27-2
>

I found this reply somewhat unhelpful and turned instead to a neighbour
who runs Debian.
She had the answer in a few minutes and now I have access to the floppy
drive. She did in a few minutes what Ubuntu appear to failed to do in
over twelve months.
Basically the floppy drive had been ignored and was not mounted.
Remembering that the previous 8.04 suffered the same fault.
I like Ubuntu but feel that there is too much emphasis on the next
update in six months. Maybe once a year (or 18 months)
and get it right first?
D.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

What was unhelpful about the reply. This bug is a duplicate of a bug that has already been reported, so I told you that and gave you the number of the master bug report (which has a workaround).

So, what did I say that was not helpful?

[Derek Bollam (dbollam-deactivatedaccount)]

Chris Coulson wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 255651 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/255651
>
> What was unhelpful about the reply. This bug is a duplicate of a bug
> that has already been reported, so I told you that and gave you the
> number of the master bug report (which has a workaround).
>
> So, what did I say that was not helpful?
>
Sorry if I upset you but look at it from my point of view. I am not a
geek, I am still new to Ubuntu and this problem has been around too
long. In fact it happened years ago with an earlier version of Ubuntu
and again it took a year to be fixed.
I tried the workaround but failed probably because of inexperience in
use of Terminal and the language. I spent hours getting nowhere until
asking a neighbour for help.
Two of the replies I had consisted of nothing but pages of numbers, they
were of no help at all. I like Ubuntu and have no desire to go back to
MS but I will never recommend Ubuntu to friends unless I consider that
they are as stubborn as myself.
The jump from MS to Linux is beyond most people who are (they think)
safe with MS. The devil thy know - - - - - - - etc.
One final excuse - I am 84 and there is some truth in the saying "You
can't teach an old dog new tricks".
But I keep trying.
D.

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 07:08:55AM -0000, Derek Bollam wrote:
> She had the answer in a few minutes and now I have access to the floppy
> drive. She did in a few minutes what Ubuntu appear to failed to do in
> over twelve months.
> Basically the floppy drive had been ignored and was not mounted.

To save the next person the same pain it would be helpful if you could
detail the magic as performed by your friend in this bug. This will:

1) benefit any person stubmling upon this bug trying to find a solution, and
2) allow 'ubuntu' to understand the fix and work out how to prevent it
   in the future.

Linux is a colaborative effort overall.

[Derek Bollam (dbollam-deactivatedaccount)]

Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 255651 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/255651
>
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 07:08:55AM -0000, Derek Bollam wrote:
>
>> She had the answer in a few minutes and now I have access to the floppy
>> drive. She did in a few minutes what Ubuntu appear to failed to do in
>> over twelve months.
>> Basically the floppy drive had been ignored and was not mounted.
>>
>
> To save the next person the same pain it would be helpful if you could
> detail the magic as performed by your friend in this bug. This will:
>
> 1) benefit any person stubmling upon this bug trying to find a solution, and
> 2) allow 'ubuntu' to understand the fix and work out how to prevent it
> in the future.
>
> Linux is a colaborative effort overall.
>

Hi,
Below you will find the 'magic' as it was emailed to me. All I can say
is "it worked for me" and it may not be perfect since it claims it
cannot mount while actually doing so.

*******************

Ubuntu has really missed the boat on this floppy problem if they haven't
created a mount point for it. Before doing anything else, check to see
if there is a mount point on your setup by opening a terminal and
running this command:

ls -l /media/

Here is what I see when I run it:

total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-05-27 13:35 card
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2007-09-24 17:54 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-09-24 17:54 cdrom0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2007-09-24 17:54 floppy -> floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-09-24 17:54 floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-04 17:16 usbdisk

The "->" indicates a soft link to the real mount point. The one you want
is the floppy0. If it isn't there, you can create it by using your usual
sudo command (with your options s and h) mkdir, such as:

sudo -s -h mkdir /media/floppy0

I am not sure how you give the s and h options. Do as you usually do and
then check the "ls -l" command again to see if your permissions are the
same as mine (drwxr-xr-x). If not, then give this command (preceded by
sudo):

chmod 755 /media/floppy0

That is a shorter way of doing what he says with the g+rwx command.
Do you have the soft link in your listing? Maybe you will need that for
automounting. If it isn't there, give this command (using sudo):

ln -s /media/floppy0 /media/floppy

Leave the additional line in fstab as in mine:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

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

Also, leave "floppy" in /etc/modules (without quotation marks and in
lower case).

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 09:41:57AM +1300, Derek Bollam wrote:

> > I can always fall back on modprobe floppy in terminal but this thing
> > is beginning to annoy me and to add to the problem I see that gfloppy
> > formatter does not work either.
>

Try in a terminal with an unmounted floppy:

superformat /dev/fd0 HD

I don't have to use sudo but you may.

********************

There we are, I hope this is of use to all and sundry.
A final thought - - - I know from experience that a great number of people...