Nigel Kendrick wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Ralph Angenendt Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 10:01 AM To: centos@centos.org Subject: Re: [CentOS] Mounting Floppies

Nigel Kendrick wrote:

...

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!

As always: Logfile excerpts could have been a great help. Also dmesg probably has to say something about that >:)

Ralph

Oh yes, dmesg is very verbose:

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

Logfile is a little more specific - but not conclusive (apart from the fact that something's not right) - here's up to when I plugged in and used the USB floppy:

Jun 19 11:21:51 data01 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0 Jun 19 11:22:14 data01 kernel: floppy0: -- FDC reply errorend_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 19 11:22:14 data01 kernel: Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0 Jun 19 11:22:32 data01 kernel: floppy0: -- FDC reply errorend_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 19 11:22:51 data01 kernel: floppy0: -- FDC reply errorend_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 2 Jun 19 11:27:24 data01 kernel: floppy0: -- FDC reply errorend_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 19 11:27:39 data01 kernel: floppy0: -- FDC reply errorend_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0 Jun 19 11:43:22 data01 kernel: Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M Jun 19 11:54:01 data01 kernel: sdd:<6>Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M Jun 19 15:03:14 data01 kernel: Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

You've tried replacing the drive, and the disk works in your USB floppy drive, so about all that's left are the cable and the floppy controller on the motherboard. Probably not much you can do about the latter.

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of William L. Maltby Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 7:03 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Re: Mounting Floppies

On Fri, 2008-06-20 at 11:54 -0500, Robert Nichols wrote:

Nigel Kendrick wrote:

...

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On

Behalf

...

Of Ralph Angenendt

<sent>

...

Nigel Kendrick wrote:

...

<snip>

You've tried replacing the drive, and the disk works in your USB floppy

drive,

so about all that's left are the cable and the floppy controller on the motherboard. Probably not much you can do about the latter.

HAH! Oh ye of little faith! You severely underestimate the number of creative ways the "hoomon" can befuddle hisself!

Based on experience - NOT mine, of course 8-O - the power cable mentioned in my other post may be bad, the connectors often are not keyed and the cable may be backwards on one end or the other, older re-used cables may have micro-fractures (from overuse of their flexible properties), the jumpers on the floppy (if present) that select different operating and configurations may be messed up, ...

Well that's all I can think of at the monument (sic).

...Hm, but you are forgetting I have tried this on two separate machines - unfortunately both of which have recently been gifted with CentOS 5 where before they ran 4.x. One of the machines had been sitting idle for about 2 months until I decided to revamp it with bigger drives and install CentOS 5. For the first install the floppy was working because I used it to install drivers for the RAID card - just as I was trying to do this time round

...and before you think I may have disturbed the innards, the old/new drives are in caddies so I only opened up the machine to swap out the floppy drive when I experienced problems. One server is an Acer G703 and the other has an Intel dual Xeon board in it so it's not motherboard-related.

Multiple, coincidental failures? Maybe - I think I'll boot the new server on an old version of Knoppix and see what happens....

On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 14:21 +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 11:54 -0500, Robert Nichols wrote:

...

Nigel Kendrick wrote:

...

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On

Behalf

...

...

Of Ralph Angenendt

<sent>

...

...

Nigel Kendrick wrote:

...

<snip>

...

You've tried replacing the drive, and the disk works in your USB floppy

drive,

...

so about all that's left are the cable and the floppy controller on the motherboard. Probably not much you can do about the latter.

HAH! Oh ye of little faith! You severely underestimate the number of creative ways the "hoomon" can befuddle hisself!

Based on experience - NOT mine, of course 8-O - the power cable mentioned in my other post may be bad, the connectors often are not keyed and the cable may be backwards on one end or the other, older re-used cables may have micro-fractures (from overuse of their flexible properties), the jumpers on the floppy (if present) that select different operating and configurations may be messed up, ...

Well that's all I can think of at the monument (sic).

...Hm, but you are forgetting I have tried this on two separate machines -

Nope. I was just pointing out to Ralph that we can still goof it up many other ways.

unfortunately both of which have recently been gifted with CentOS 5 where before they ran 4.x. One of the machines had been sitting idle for about 2 months until I decided to revamp it with bigger drives and install CentOS 5. For the first install the floppy was working because I used it to install drivers for the RAID card - just as I was trying to do this time round

...and before you think I may have disturbed the innards, the old/new drives are in caddies so I only opened up the machine to swap out the floppy drive when I experienced problems. One server is an Acer G703 and the other has an Intel dual Xeon board in it so it's not motherboard-related.

In all honesty, I made no assumptions. Just heaving out some ideas that might spark the thought that yields a solution.

Multiple, coincidental failures? Maybe - I think I'll boot the new server on an old version of Knoppix and see what happens....

Sorry you didn't get it going. I'm beginning to wonder if there is a kernel parameter in grub that is affecting this? Or, since you mention xen in your other post, was it involved? BIOS? I know in real UNIX, the BIOS used to be essentially ignored. I'm not sure if Linux depends more on it (my gut feeling is that it does) and maybe it's affected by a BIOS setting? Of course, that would indicate that the others you mention ran successfully in you other post have a different discovery process going on. Chances: slim-to-none?

I only keep wondering since mine worked fine once I gave it some power.

I see you won't be chasing this, so I hope someone with more knowledge pursues this.

I'm glad you got an acceptable solution for your needs though.

<snip sig stuff>

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of William L. Maltby Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 2:16 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Mounting Floppies

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.

Thanks

Nigel Kendrick

<snip sig stuff>

HTH