On Fri, 2008-06-20 at 14:54 +0100, Nigel Kendrick wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of William L. Maltby
<snip>
On Fri, 2008-06-20 at 09:54 +0100, Nigel Kendrick wrote:
Hi - daft one for Friday morning coffee break:
I have been trying to mount floppies on a couple of CentOS5 servers - the usual "mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy" (yes, /mnt/floppy exists!).
On both servers, the mount command just doesn't come back and I have to hit CTRL-C. I have tried different media and also changed the floppy drive on one server, /dev/fd0 is seen as present on both servers and they are enabled in the BIOS. I have formatted and tested the floppies on my desktop PC without problems.
In the end, I gave up, stuck a USB floppy on one of the boxes and it mounted with no problems.
So is it me, CentOS 5 or something else? (Ideas, anyone!?). It could be a set of duff floppies and three flaky drives (two brand new), but I thought I'd ask before I spend too much more time on it!
Here is support - it may not be you. I've successfully mounted and used FDs on this system in previous kernel releases.
Out of /var/log messages when I did an sfdisk -l /dev/fd0 and dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/null count=1.
Jun 20 09:07:54 centos501 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 20 09:08:06 centos501 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 20 09:08:06 centos501 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0 Jun 20 09:08:18 centos501 kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 20 09:08:18 centos501 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0
My dmesg has
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
If necessary (lack of prompt resolution on these lists) I'll "ribit" to an older kernel and see what happens. I suggest you might try that.
<snip>
Does a "cluebat" look anything like a 6' 2x4? I forgot that last time I went deep-case diving, I had removed the power connector from the floppy. I hope that your worst result is that you too need this "cluebat". :-)
Here is my diagnosis procedure in a little-more-than-required detail.
1. On "ribit", turn on floppy seek in the BIOS setup. 2. Hear silence, observe no floppy light 3. Pause, ... computational analysis by biological computer known to be more powerful than "Big Blue" (until recently anyway). 4. Upon the dawning of realization, search frantically for misplaced "cluebat". 5. <*sigh*> 6. Pummel oneself about the ears, severely, with aforementioned tool. 7. Open case, ... well "Now you know the rest of the story" (famous former radio broadcaster).
The first read attempt failed. Hmmm... Try again, it works. Sounds like udev may not have finished set up. Anyway...
The confirmation of success was substantially easier. I did find it interesting that the system recognizes the floppy even with no power. Must be getting a necessary trickle through the floppy cable.
]# dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/null count=1 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 512 bytes (512 B) copied, 4.4863e-05 seconds, 11.4 MB/s
# mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy/ [root@centos501 ~]# ls -l /media/floppy/ total 0 [root@centos501 ~]# df /media/floppy Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/fd0 1424 0 1424 0% /media/floppy
Please let me know if you suffered the same error as I - loneliness sucks and the list loves a good laugh at our (my, anybody's) expense.
HTH