[Leaplist] Floppy problem in Lenny - Debian

[Whit Hansell]

Thanks again Richard.


Richard F. Ostrow Jr. wrote:
> On Tue, July 10, 2007 4:39 pm, Whit Hansell wrote:
>   
>> Richard,
>> Thanks for replying.  I appreciate it.
>>
>> brightsun:/# dmesg | grep fd
>> mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000)
>> Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
>>     
>
> Ok, that's clear proof that the kernel did load a floppy
>
>   
>> As to lsmod,  I got nfs, ext3, and of course a bunch more but no msdos,
>> or vfat or fat.  So I did as you suggested and ran modprobe msdos,
>> modprobe vfat and now at the top of the new lsmod list I get:
>>
>> brightsun:/# lsmod
>> Module                  Size  Used by
>> vfat                   11648  0
>> msdos                   8576  0
>> fat                    45980  2 vfat,msdos
>>      etc.........
>>
>> So now I show these modules, I guess, available?
>>     
>
> Good, that means the modules are available if needed (mount would
> auto-load them as needed).
>
>   
>> So I just popped in a floppy to the drive and
>>
>> brightsun:/# mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0
>> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/fd0,
>>        missing codepage or other error
>>        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>>        dmesg | tail  or so
>>     
>
> Interesting... If this were a kernel that you compiled yourself, I'd
> recommend verifying that you have codepage 437 compiled in... but I can't
> imagine that anyone would release a kernel with a distro without that, and
> I'd tend to think you'd be running into all sorts of other problems if
> that were the case. I'm going to keep this possibility at the back of my
> mind as we try other things...
>
>   
>> brightsun:/# dmesg | tail
>> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
>> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev fd0.
>> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
>> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev fd0.
>>     
>
> Pretty clear it's not reading correctly... the question is why?
>
>   
>> brightsun:/# mount /dev/fd0
>> mount: you must specify the filesystem type
>>     
>
> What's in your /etc/fstab file for the floppy? You can get that pretty
> quick with a "grep fd0 /etc/fstab".
>
>   
brightsun:/# grep fd0 /etc/fstab
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  msdos   rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  ext3    rw,user,noauto  0       0

The "auto" was the default and I added the other two, the "msdos" to see 
if it would force a mount and the "ext3" in case I could get access to 
the floppy drive, I could possibly, later, start using some ext3 
formatted floppies if I wanted to do so.  Anyway, so far, nuttin's helped.

> Also, try the following and see if it works:
>
> "mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0"
>
> Maybe the fs is incorrect?
>
>   
brightsun:/# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0
mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

Again, rats!

<snip>

Thanks for your help.
Whit