Hi all,(rant)
I just can't understand why if you have a floppy and a cd/dvd burner/drive on your computer, Mandriva and few other distros dont show it in the devices section or at least somewhere..Does this pose some unusual security risk that I do not understand? I guess I do not understand the mentality of that..Anyway,My /etc/fstab is as follows:
(data)

/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=utf8,sync 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,iocharset=utf8 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0


(question) How do you get Mandriva 2007 (free) to allow either copy/read to a floppy and or see the drive in the Devices section? Note the cdrom/dvd will open in K3b or other multimedia packages but not the floppy drive...

(statement) Otherwise it is a very, very, fine distro...
Nice job mandriva developers....
Jolphil

If you stick a floppy in the drive, it should pop up on the screen. That is what supermount does. It does not mount like usb devices. Is that why you think it should be visible? Now, I could be wrong because I have not used a floppy since version 8.
What happens when you stick a floppy in the drive?
Also, in kde, there is a way to show an unmounted floppy device. Just tic the box.

Hi,
Thank you for your reply..Sorry but I have been away for a few days..
When you stick a floppy in the drive absolutely nothing happens..You can't copy/mount it because it is not visible anywhere that I can find..Maybe it's a permission or ownership problem?
again thank you for your help,
jolphil

Am observing this thread and have the same problem too.

It appears to me that supermount does not work...Not sure why though..I would think that most folks will have this problem and it's not unique to just us..
jolphil

If supermount is still broken (as it was for a long time) then remove it from the line in your /etc/fstab and only show the mount point. Then, you must mount the device anytime you wish to use it. The new line should be something like this:"/mnt/floppy /dev/fd0 auto umask=0,iocharset=utf8,sync 0 0"

Put a floppy in the drive and type "mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy"

I am still not sure why cd devices work and the floppy does not.

This type of question has been asked a lot recently. Many newer distros do not have entries for removable drives in their /etc/fstab because those devices are automatically detected and configured when inserted or attached to the system. This is because most of the new distros use dbus and hal by default. I guess its difficult to automatically detect the insertion of a floppy, so this is probably the only entry you would need to create yourself in /etc/fstab. I also wouldn't bother with supermount since its not really needed these days.

by implication reddaz is saying
check that HAL and dbus services are running
(and maybe some other services)

I had a case of supermount not working anymore
for floppies in mdv 2005, never found out why
(I did not mess with /etc/fstab), but when
upgrading to 2007 the floppy re-worked

It does in konqueror under
//system or something like that in the input line
(cannot check syntax here)

Thanks all,
i checked and there is no dbus but there is the hal daemon that is running..
I have not tried editing the /etc/fstab yet but I guess thats the only way this will be solved..
Thank you all for your replies..
jolphil
Edit:Oops..There is a dbus installed I did not see it in the services..I'll look again..

It does in konqueror under
system/

did you try the above syntax?
in the konqueror input line?

I am looking but still have not found it..
jolphil

By Golly with your guidance,I think It's working..
Found the floppy as you pointed out and set the mount point and then set it to open with supermount..
Then I created a desktop device shortcut and volia!!!
Thanks a million, you guys are great...
jolphil