CentOS - Apr 2013 - floppy drives

Yes, really. I've got hundreds of the damn things here at home, and I 
want to go through them and get rid of them all.

But... to do that I want to read them. I have both a 5.25" and a 3.5" 
drive, both are plugged in, but in the BIOS, all I see is the 3.5". 
Fine, I figure I'll take care of those.

Nope. I see /dev/fd0 once I've booted up, but neither konqueror nor 
mount nor fdisk works - the latter telling me that /dev/fd0 is not a 
valid block device. After some googling, I tried modprobe floppy, which 
installed it, but still no joy.

Anyone have a clue?

	mark

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 2:45 PM, mark <m.roth at 5-cent.us>
wrote:
> Yes, really. I've got hundreds of the damn things here at home, and I
> want to go through them and get rid of them all.
>
> But... to do that I want to read them. I have both a 5.25" and a
3.5"
> drive, both are plugged in, but in the BIOS, all I see is the 3.5".
> Fine, I figure I'll take care of those.
>
> Nope. I see /dev/fd0 once I've booted up, but neither konqueror nor
> mount nor fdisk works - the latter telling me that /dev/fd0 is not a
> valid block device. After some googling, I tried modprobe floppy, which
> installed it, but still no joy.
>
> Anyone have a clue?
What file system is on them?  Or did you do something like raw tar
writes to them?   If it is typical dos/window FAT, try the programs
from the mtools package. mdir, mcopy, etc.   I hate to fight with
stuff like that so I'd probably use a windows box connected to a samba
share to move things over.

--
  Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com

On Sun, 2013-04-07 at 15:45 -0400, mark wrote:
> Yes, really. I've got hundreds of the damn things here at home, and I 
> want to go through them and get rid of them all.
> 
> But... to do that I want to read them. I have both a 5.25" and a
3.5"
> drive, both are plugged in, but in the BIOS, all I see is the 3.5". 
> Fine, I figure I'll take care of those.
> 
> Nope. I see /dev/fd0 once I've booted up, but neither konqueror nor 
> mount nor fdisk works - the latter telling me that /dev/fd0 is not a 
> valid block device. After some googling, I tried modprobe floppy, which 
> installed it, but still no joy.
> 
> Anyone have a clue?
> 
> 	mark
Mark, you said that both floppy drives are connected. Could it be that
both are wired to fd0? One drive could be malfunctioning.... Try with
only one drive connected at a time at the end of the cable and see if
that helps...
Louis

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 2:45 PM, mark <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> Yes, really. I've got hundreds of the damn things here at home, and I
> want to go through them and get rid of them all.
>
> But... to do that I want to read them. I have both a 5.25" and a
3.5"
> drive, both are plugged in, but in the BIOS, all I see is the 3.5".
> Fine, I figure I'll take care of those.
>
> Nope. I see /dev/fd0 once I've booted up, but neither konqueror nor
> mount nor fdisk works - the latter telling me that /dev/fd0 is not a
> valid block device. After some googling, I tried modprobe floppy, which
> installed it, but still no joy.
>
> Anyone have a clue?

To debug this, I'd do the following:

1. Remove both USB plugs (I assume that these floppies are USB connected)
2. Reboot
3. Plug just one in, then do
  lsusb
and get the end of /var/log/messages
One of these might tell you where the floppy is connected in /dev.  It
might not
be /dev/fd0
4. If it doesn't show up immediately, try putting in a floppy disk and do 3
again.
5. If it doesn't show up again, then it's probably dead.
6. If it does show, perhaps at /dev/sdb1, then create a file .mtoolsrc:
  # USB drive
  drive u: file="/dev/sdb1"
Then do
  mdir u:

Of course, it will probably show up at /dev/fd<n>.

Just my pre-tax 2 cents.

-- 
Dale Dellutri

On Tue, April 9, 2013 13:46, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Fred Smith wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 12:21:10PM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>> Frank Cox wrote:
>>> > On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 10:19:33 -0400
>>> > m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Hmmm... didn't see it mounted, but I'll try more
tonight. Last
>>> night
>>> >> included a) playing with system, and b) finishing up our
federal
>>> >> taxes....
> <snip>
>>> I also can't seem to find the USB 3.5" drive I borrowed -
lsusb
>>> sees it
>>> (at least since the last reboot), but trying to find it to mount it
>>> is
>>> something I'm still digging at, and I doubt mtools can find it.
>>
>> As far as I remember (I'm not as young as I used to be, and
it's
>> been a
>> while), the 3.5" USB floppy drive here would recognize a
(formatted)
>> floppy when inserted and mount it automatically, on Centos 5.x.
>> (assuming it contained a recognizable filesystem...)
>
> Even if there's nothing about floppies in /etc/fstab? Or is that
> something I need to configure for autofs?
>>
Just to obtain some empirical data I have connected a usb 3.5 FDD unit
to my CentOS-6.4 workstation and inserted a previously unused 3.5
HDFD.  The Nautilus system automatically opened a window on my desktop
and I was able to copy and removed files from the diskette without any
difficulty.

A peek into /media shows this:


# tree /media
/media
&#9492;&#9472;&#9472; disk

1 directory, 0 files


While /etc/fstab shows me nothing that obviously relates to the fdd:


# cat /etc/fstab

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Mon Sep 24 12:57:28 2012
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more
info
#
/dev/mapper/vg_vhost04-lv_root /                       ext4   
defaults        1 1
UUID=a9a7cc59-bd0c-4362-9ab6-f721e25df2f8 /boot                   ext4
   defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_vhost04-lv_home /home                   ext4   
defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_vhost04-lv_tmp /tmp                    ext4    defaults
       1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_vhost04-lv_log /var/log                ext4    defaults
       1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_vhost04-lv_spool /var/spool              ext4   
defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_vhost04-lv_swap swap                    swap   
defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults      
 0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620
 0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults      
 0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults      
 0 0
/dev/vg_vhost04/lv_centos_repos	/var/data/centos	ext4	defaults	00
/dev/vg_vhost04/lv_home_byrnejb	/home/byrnejb	ext4	defaults	0	0

Mount on the other hand shows this:

/dev/sdb on /media/disk type vfat
(rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=500,gid=500,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)

And udisks show this:

howing information for /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sdb
  native-path:                
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/host10/target10:0:0/10:0:0:0/block/sdb
  device:                      8:16
  device-file:                 /dev/sdb
    presentation:              /dev/sdb
    by-id:                    
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Y-E_DATA_USB_Floppy_Drive
    by-path:                  
/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:1a.0-usb-0:1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
  detected at:                 Wed 10 Apr 2013 09:08:55  EDT
  system internal:             0
  removable:                   1
  has media:                   1 (detected at Wed 10 Apr 2013 09:09:07
 EDT)
    detects change:            1
    detection by polling:      1
    detection inhibitable:     1
    detection inhibited:       0
  is read only:                0
  is mounted:                  1
  mount paths:             /media/disk
  mounted by uid:              500
  presentation hide:           0
  presentation nopolicy:       0
  presentation name:
  presentation icon:
  size:                        1474560
  block size:                  512
  job underway:                no
  usage:                       filesystem
  type:                        vfat
  version:                     FAT12
  uuid:
  label:
  drive:
    vendor:                    Y-E DATA
    model:                     USB Floppy Drive
    revision:                  0601
    serial:
    WWN:
    detachable:                1
    can spindown:              0
    rotational media:          Yes, unknown rate
    write-cache:               unknown
    ejectable:                 0
    adapter:                   Unknown
    ports:
    similar devices:
    media:                     floppy
      compat:                  floppy
    interface:                 usb
    if speed:                  12000000 bits/s
    ATA SMART:                 not available

-- 
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