"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

The Answer Guy

By James T. Dennis,
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

Floppy/mount Problems: Disk Spins, Lights are on, No one's Home?

From Jonathan on 24 Sep 1998

I have built a custom system just for Linux, but the only problem I have is that when I try to mount a floppy, the light just comes on and the disk just spins. The motherboard is a new Tyan that is full of PCI PnP. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. TIA

-=Jonathan=-

What is the exact mount command that you are attempting? If you are relying on an entry in your /etc/fstab to provide the filesystem type and options, what does that line look like?

How is this diskette formatted? What if you use the mtools commands on a DOS formatted floppy?

Do any associated messages appear in your syslog (/var/log/messages)? Are you sure that you have the flopp support compiled into this kernel? (Perhaps you have to load a module)?

If it really is a PnP issue you could look for the PnP tools for Linux (these are userspace tools, mostly without kernel patches --- though I'm pretty ignorant on the details. I generally recommend disabling any BIOS PnP ("Plug and Pray") features when installing Linux --- particularly on a dedicated Linux server where you don't have to accomodate some other OS.

If all else fails, boot up with a copy of DOS (DR-DOS even) and access the floppy that way --- or try a tomsrtbt (Tom Oehser's Root/Boot distribution on a floppy -- the best Linux rescue diskette I've found). Naturally these have to use the floppy --- so it should be pretty obvious if there's some hardware failure or incompatibility.

Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 33 October 1998

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