No LS120 floppy support in Ubuntu

[Norman Petry]

Ubuntu does not appear to have any support for my LS-120 floppy drive.

After a standard Ubuntu install (from bootable CD-ROM), my fstab looks like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/md1 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda3 /spare ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda2 /win vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hde1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdg1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

My LS-120 seems to be detected by the kernel (as hdd):

 # cat /proc/ide/hdd/model
LS-120 VER5 00 UHD Floppy

There are no mount points for the floppy in /mnt, and also the device is missing
in /dev/:

 # ls -l /dev/hd*

brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 2004-11-01 16:27 hda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 1 2004-11-01 16:27 hda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 2 2004-11-01 16:27 hda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 3 2004-11-01 16:27 hda3
brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 3, 64 2004-11-01 16:27 hdb
brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 22, 0 2004-11-01 16:27 hdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 33, 0 2004-11-01 16:27 hde
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 33, 1 2004-11-01 16:27 hde1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 33, 2 2004-11-01 16:27 hde2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 33, 3 2004-11-01 16:27 hde3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 34, 0 2004-11-01 16:27 hdg
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 34, 1 2004-11-01 16:27 hdg1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 34, 2 2004-11-01 16:27 hdg2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 34, 3 2004-11-01 16:27 hdg3

I can probably create the necessary device using MAKEDEV, but it would be nice
if this would "just work" out of the box. Even better would be if disk
insertion would automount the diskette and have it appear on the desktop, just
like a CD-ROM. I believe that LS-120s may be capable of reporting
disk-insertion events, so this may be possible. I know that disk ejection
works, at least.

The automount thing I can live without (though it would be nice!), but at a
minimum there should be /etc/fstab and /dev/ support for these devices, I think.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Did you try loading the ide-floppy module? If that fixes it, this is a
duplicate of bug #8509.

[Norman Petry (npetry)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Did you try loading the ide-floppy module? If that fixes it, this is a
> duplicate of bug #8509.

OK, I read some of the related bug reports, and have manually added ide-floppy
to my /etc/modules, so it now looks like this:

# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are
# to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with
# a "#", and everything on the line after them are ignored.

sr_mod
psmouse
mousedev
ide-cd
ide-floppy
ide-disk
ide-generic
sbp2
lp

I also created a mount point at /media/floppy/, and added a line to my
/etc/fstab, so it now looks like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/md1 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda3 /spare ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda2 /win vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hde1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdg1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/floppy auto user,noauto 0 0

With this setup, I can now mount floppies, but there is still a minor problem --
the 'eject' command no longer works:

$ eject /media/floppy/
eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument

I have tried various command-line options with this command, with no success.
Note that the eject command does *unmount* the disk (if it had been mounted),
but the disk no longer ejects and I get this error instead. I know that the
hardware is working fine, and is capable of ejecting disks because the 'eject'
command worked properly when I had RH9 installed on this same system a couple of
weeks ago.

Please indicate if there are any additional steps I should take to get this set
up and working properly.

I don't think that ordinary users can be expected to mess with /etc/fstab and
/etc/modules to get their LS-120s working in Ubuntu, so this is still a
usability bug. You might want to merge it with #1763 though.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 8509.