[NTLUG:Discuss] Trouble mounting my floppy

[Steve Baker]

juice at airmail.net wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 23 Dec 1999 10:21:47 -0600, "Carter B. Bennett"
> <lhcs at fastlane.net> wrote:
> 
> >I know, that sounds like a personal problem, but all jokes aside, in the
> >fstab file it is defined as:
> >
> >/dev/fd0               /mnt/floppy             ext2, noauto
> >
> I'm not sure there is supposed to be a comma in that line.

There certainly shouldn't be.

Basically, the format is:

what_device   where_to_mount_it   what_format_it_is   list_of_options

Hence 'ext2' is 'what_format_it_is' - and not one of the comma-separated
list of options.  (There may also be a couple of digits after the option
list).

> Also vfat flpppies can be mounted msdos and you just lose the extra
> info.

I noticed that SuSE 6.3 allows you to put 'auto' in the 'what_format_is_it'
slot - and Linux will attempt to figure out what file format to use...that's
pretty useful for floppies.

One other cause for floppies failing to mount is that some PC's
seem to have the floppy drive set up as fd1 and not fd0.  My son's
PC is like that.  In the BIOS ROM, there is an option to swap the
floppy drive select (which would allow that to be 'A:' under DOS)...
but Linux doesn't seem to notice the BIOS ROM option.  It took me
an entire evening to figure THAT one out!

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker at hti.com      (work)