[Leaplist] Floppy problem in Lenny - Debian

[Richard F. Ostrow Jr.]

Hmm... hate to say it, but I'm running out of ideas. I only see a couple
of things, and I can't imagine that they would produce these symptoms. See
below.
On Wed, July 11, 2007 11:51 am, Whit Hansell wrote:
> 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...

This is starting to look more like the problem, but I'd be flabberghasted
(sp?) if that were the case. More likely it's not an msdos fs (probably
vfat). Anyways, to knock this out if it were the case would be non-trivial
- you'd have to compile a new kernel from sources with codepage 437
support. Like I said, I don't believe that's the problem here, I'm just
stating possibilities (admittedly distant) because I'm running out of
ideas.

>>> 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.

Hmm... not sure what mount would do with 3 different lines of the same
source device and the same destination mount point. Theoretically, the
first line *should* work fine, including ext3 support if you had an ext3
floppy.

>> 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

This really perplexes me... unless fd0 is a bad symlink to the device.
What does an "ls -l /dev/fd0" reveal? Does it point somewhere else? Does
the spot where it's pointing actually exist? Mine is a symlink pointing to
"floppy/0", which would translate to /dev/floppy/0.

One more thing to try is to see if the device works *at all*. Here's where
you get to try formatting ext3... put a blank disk in there and run
"mke2fs -j /dev/fd0" (not sure if -j would work with so little space, but
that's what makes the difference between ext2 and ext3. If not, just take
-j out). You should at least see the drive fire up, and if it finishes
successfully, you should be able to mount it as an ext3 (or 2) filesystem.