Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory

Bug #66869 reported by Luca Ferretti
36
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
nautilus (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Low
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs

Bug Description

Binary package hint: nautilus

## Steps to Reproduce ##
Try to mount and browse a floppy disk:
 1. Put a floppy disk in your floppy drive
 2. Open the Computer location in browser window
 3. Double click on "Floppy Drive" icon

## Current Behavior ##
The floppy disk is mounted, then nautilus (browser) jump to / (root) directory.

## Expected Behavior ##
Nautilus should jump to the mountpoint for floppy disk (/media/floppy) when the disk is mounted.

## Additional Info ##
If you disable the automount for CD/DVD and try to do the same to mount and view the CD/DVD disk contents, it works fine.

## Severity ##
High, IMHO. This is a really really bad behavior for unexepienced users: they expects to browse the selected item, not another location.

## Thanks ##
My mum, she discovered it while I wasn't at home. She thinks I've hacked something to annoy her....

Revision history for this message
Guilherme Gondim (semente) (semente) wrote :

I confirm this bug.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Thank you for your bug. What /etc/fstab line do you have for your floppy drive?

Changed in nautilus:
assignee: nobody → desktop-bugs
importance: Undecided → Low
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Guilherme Gondim (semente) (semente) wrote :

In my fstab:

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 ext2,vfat rw,user,sync,noauto 0 0

Revision history for this message
Luca Ferretti (elle.uca) wrote :

No entry on my system. Floppy is directly managed by HAL...

I'll add the same line from Guilherme and try

Revision history for this message
Luca Ferretti (elle.uca) wrote :

Same issue adding floppy line on /etc/fstab

Plus another strange behavior: system wan't shutdown when a floppy was mounted (and of course unmounted before invoking shutdown action from GDM or close session dialog). It seems that init can't close one process; this process seems costantly using the HD (the HD led on computer case stay on), locking the shutdown. This behavior occurs only if I mounted a floppy.

I can't find any intersting info about this in /var/log... Here is a way to display the old text based shutdown info insted usplash? I'll try removing "splash" from /boot/grub/menu.lst or using the recovery mode in grub menu (by now I never used it)

Changed in nautilus:
status: Needs Info → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Arc (av-mail) wrote :

I confirm this bug too
Importance = Low?
Why? The Majority of computers of my friends is equipped floppy. And this annoying bug leaves very unpleasant impression. Repeats on 6,10 and 7.04

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Arc, when you comment on a bug you might want to subscribe so you get the replies. Importance low because there is thousand of bugs open, many of them are crashers, applications not working, etc. The majority of your friends might still use floppy, that's far to be the case for other users. As you can notice that bug has been reported once, there is no duplicate and only 3 people subscribe, it means very few users are concerned about it. The importance low seems to be correct

Revision history for this message
Ronaldo Maia (romaia) wrote :

I can still reproduce this bug.

Additionally, if the user tries to access the floppy disk again, after its already mounted, he will be given an error message, saying that pmount fails because the floppy is already mounted.

After all this, there is no easy way for the user to umount the floppy other then in a terminal.

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

Same here.

@Sebastien
I think that the Importance shouldn't be related just to the number of Duplicated Bug but also (and probably more important) to Usability and coherence of the system itself.
I know a lot of people using Ubuntu (newbies) that have this problem, really annoying for them, but they are not able to report it here.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

That's still only an annoyance and users tend to have usb keys nowadays anyway

Revision history for this message
mciancio (mciancio) wrote :

I agree with Sergio Zanchetta: there are many people having this problem. It's a difficult to say "Use Ubuntu" if it's hard even to use a floppy!!!
I've introduced many Ubuntu PC in a school (about 80) and this was perhaps the most annoying problem.

Revision history for this message
Nathan Sink (nathan-sink) wrote :

This has been a problem with Ubuntu since I first began using it when Dapper Drake was first out. I agree with Sergio, "I think that the Importance [should] be related...to [the] Usability and coherence of the system itself." Although this issue does not compromise the security or stability of the system, it does compromise the user's seamless Ubuntu experience. I could name several dozen people who would be throughly confused if they were to ever try to open a floppy in Ubuntu.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Looking at the number of duplicates and subscribed there is not a lot of floppy users nowadays

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote : Re: [Bug 66869] Re: Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory

Sebastien, try to see it in this way:

I't quite obvious ( in my opinion) that you don't find a lot of
duplicates here etc.. because it's an issue that affects "newbies"
mainly.
That kind of users know how to power on a pc, write letters, browse
internet and no more.
You won't find them here on launchpad writing about a bug.

If I should write here a comment or add a bug for each person I know
that are abawed about this bug, you would get a lot of stuff here.

2007/11/22, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>:
> Looking at the number of duplicates and subscribed there is not a lot of
> floppy users nowadays
>
> --
> Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66869
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

That's true for any bug. Nowadays most of users use usb stick anyway, you can get a 1Go key for the price of 10 floppy disks, is there a compelent reason to still use those?

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

If it was true (I agree with you but it's not that the point) Ubuntu
should DELETE support for it in the distribution, because floppy is
useless.
You shouldn't even see the floppy icon so. no floppy, no bug.

But why it doesn't do it?

2007/11/23, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>:
> That's true for any bug. Nowadays most of users use usb stick anyway,
> you can get a 1Go key for the price of 10 floppy disks, is there a
> compelent reason to still use those?
>
> --
> Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66869
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

By the way, a lot of people, at least here in Italy, have a lot of old
things stored in floppy disk (unfortunately).
As long as PC are still sold with floppy I think it should be nice supported.

2007/11/23, Sergio Zanchetta <email address hidden>:
> If it was true (I agree with you but it's not that the point) Ubuntu
> should DELETE support for it in the distribution, because floppy is
> useless.
> You shouldn't even see the floppy icon so. no floppy, no bug.
>
> But why it doesn't do it?
>
>
>
> 2007/11/23, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>:
> > That's true for any bug. Nowadays most of users use usb stick anyway,
> > you can get a 1Go key for the price of 10 floppy disks, is there a
> > compelent reason to still use those?
> >
> > --
> > Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66869
> > You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> > of the bug.
> >
>

Revision history for this message
Ronaldo Maia (romaia) wrote :

"Nowadays most of users use usb stick anyway, you can get a 1Go key for the price of 10 floppy disks, is there a compelent reason to still use those?"

That may be true where you live, probably a rich and developed country. But that's not the case here in Brasil.

But the price is not the issue here. The problem is that people still depend on floppy disks. They did for a long time, (before usb sticks, rewritable CDs and what ever there is nowadays) and they will for a long time.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

> If it was true (I agree with you but it's not that the point) Ubuntu should DELETE support for it in the distribution, because floppy is useless.

Such comment are misplaced in the bug tracker, we try to solve technical issues. Nobody claimed that floppy support is useless or not to be removed, it's something which is mostly working and nice to have, that's just not something which is not a priority for new work, you are welcome to fix floppy bugs if you still have a working drive for those though

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

or not to be removed should be or going to be removed

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

Sebastien, I didn't intend to flame with my last comment, sorry if you
think I did.

I and all other people here just want to give a hand (reporting bugs
etc..) to improve our prederred OS Ubuntu.

The idea that came up in my mind reading all comments from the beginning was:

<<Due to almost nobody use floppy nowadays we don't need to give
attention to it, this bug maybe will be fixed in the future (it could
be other 2 years or so).>>

My comment was intended to be a a sort of paradox about that.

With our comments we just would like to explain that sometimes the way
we think the things goes is quite different compared to reality (as
Ronaldo said) and that the scale for judging a bug (number of comments
or duplicates) is not applicable in the same way to all bug.(my
comment about newbies).

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Reporting bug is a good way to contribute, arguing on the settings is not really useful though, it rather makes developer speed time reading those comments and discussing something which is already confirmed being a bug while they could fix issues. Nobody argue this is not a bug or would not be really nice to get fixed, but we have some thousand desktop bugs and only a small number of people working on those between package updates and bug triage so we can't work on everything. I've no working floppy drive on my desktops and laptop so it's not easy for me to look at the issue but I would be happy to help somebody who wants to look at the issue. I'm marking the bug has a low priority bug milestoned for hardy and listing it on the sponsorship list so people who look to contribute know that's something they can work on to start

Changed in nautilus:
milestone: none → ubuntu-8.04
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

I'm glad you have understood our point Sebastien.
Thank you for activating mentoring on this bug.

Revision history for this message
gmlion (gm-l) wrote :

I don't know if you all know, but I want to point out that this bug is a REGRESSION from Dapper. As far as I remember, in Dapper the floppy worked fine. Perhaps this could help correcting the bug. Also, I see many italian reporters here. I wonder if it is only an accident

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

@Sebastien

I have a floppy drive on my laptop.
If you want I can give you some feedback debugging, providing some stuff and testing what you need to fix this bug.
Just tell me how I can contribute.

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

@Sebastien

I found out this:
1) Double clicking on floppy icon in Computer, it opens a root directory (/) window and floppy is mounted.

BUT

2) If I doesn't double click to floppy icon for the first, but instead I mount the floppy with Right click->mount, THEN when I double click to floppy it opens correctly.

Seems to be that when you double click an unmounted floppy, it tries to open floppy directory BEFORE floppy is mounted.
Or better, maybe mounting floppy is SLOWER than opening floppy directory.
So when it tries to open floppy directory, floppy is not yet mounted so it points to root directory (/).

Probably it just needs to wait opening directory until mounting is done.

I need some hints about how nautilus handle devices.
I think this bug is really simple to fix.

Revision history for this message
Pelládi Gábor (pelladigabor) wrote :

Please do something about this bug. I don't think it is that hard. It is really hard to explain the method to open a document received on a floppy for a first time user. Should I tell her to open the floppy, close the error dialog, go back, open floppy again? She won't believe me that Ubuntu is easy to use any more. Or is there a workaround? An other way of opening a floppy in nautilus, intuitive and easy? Thank you for your efforts.

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

A workaround could be to mount floppy first right-clicking and
selecting mount, and then double click on mounted floppy.

I agree with you about this bug, but this workaround is the best I
found out until now. (not so good anyway)

2008/2/13, Pelladi Gabor <email address hidden>:
> Please do something about this bug. I don't think it is that hard. It is
> really hard to explain the method to open a document received on a
> floppy for a first time user. Should I tell her to open the floppy,
> close the error dialog, go back, open floppy again? She won't believe me
> that Ubuntu is easy to use any more. Or is there a workaround? An other
> way of opening a floppy in nautilus, intuitive and easy? Thank you for
> your efforts.
>
>
> --
> Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66869
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Could anybody try on hardy if that's still an issue using the new nautilus gio?

Revision history for this message
Pelládi Gábor (pelladigabor) wrote :

I don't have a floppy drive in my own computer, so I could not test it, but something like this shell script could do the trick:

if [ `mount | grep /media/floppy0 | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
then
 mount /media/floppy0 && nautilus /media/floppy0
else
 nautilus /media/floppy0
fi

Place this in e.g. /usr/bin and place a shortcut on the desktop. This way a beginner can access the floppy without redundant actions.

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

@Sebastien

I'll try on Hardy live cd and I let you know.

2008/2/15, Pelladi Gabor <email address hidden>:
> I don't have a floppy drive in my own computer, so I could not test it,
> but something like this shell script could do the trick:
>
> if [ `mount | grep /media/floppy0 | wc -l` -eq 0 ]
> then
> mount /media/floppy0 && nautilus /media/floppy0
> else
> nautilus /media/floppy0
> fi
>
> Place this in e.g. /usr/bin and place a shortcut on the desktop. This
> way a beginner can access the floppy without redundant actions.
>
>
> --
> Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66869
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

@Sebastien

I tried with Hardy Alpha 4 and it is even worse.

Now double clicking on floppy icon in Places->Computer does nothing.

I mean no activity in floppy drive, absolutely nothing, and there is'nt mount option in right click menu.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

the hardy issue is likely bug #188256, will need to be tested again once this one has been fixed there

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

I just subscribed myself to that bug, when it'll be fixed i try again.

2008/2/16, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>:
> the hardy issue is likely bug #188256, will need to be tested again once
> this one has been fixed there
>
> --
> Double click on "Floppy Drive" in Computer location jumps to / directory
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66869
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Revision history for this message
Massol (massol) wrote :

Bug two year old!!! Unbelievable!

Revision history for this message
Carl Angelo Villegas (angelo-v) wrote :

A two year old bug should be fixed already, I think... And can we make floppy auto detect? So we won't need to right click>mount or right click>unmount?

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

no, floppy can't be autodetected, that's an hardware limitation

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

The issue is fixed in hardy, using the browser mode a duplicate view is opened but that's an another issue

Changed in nautilus:
status: Triaged → Fix Released
status: Fix Released → Fix Committed
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
status: Fix Released → Fix Committed
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
USSR (samuel-lee-1991) wrote :

I would like to comment that the bug is still in hardy, but the problem is it will not even open up the Floppy drive, as well as USB drives and MP3 Players as well.

I need to manually mount them in order to make all these work.

My fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --

#

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hda1 :

UUID=d78bea77-675b-435f-8312-c160d0352d06 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 0

# Entry for /dev/hda5 :

UUID=bdbb6811-a510-40ff-a6f0-92c621829ef9 none swap sw 0 0

/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 auto rw,user,auto,exec 0 0
# Entry for /dev/hdb1:

UUID=B078AF2C78AEEFF0 /media/hdb ntfs defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 0

/dev/hdb5 /media/hdb2 ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 0

Seriously, one thing that interests me most is that whether:
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,auto,exec 0 0

has added or not makes no difference for mounting in floppies.

There is no similar line for USB devices at all.

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