[plug] Floppy access after Edgy>Feisty upgrade

[David Dartnall]

Adam Hewitt wrote:
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au] On
>> Behalf Of Patrick Coleman
>> Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 10:35 PM
>> To: plug at plug.org.au
>> Subject: Re: [plug] Floppy access after Edgy>Feisty upgrade
>>
>> On 5/6/07, David Dartnall <darts at dialix.com.au> wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi list,
>>>
>>> It appears that my floppy drive is not automatically mounted when a
>>>       
>> disk
>>     
>>> is inserted.
>>>
>>> Access via Places>Computer>Floppy drive    returns a momentary window
>>> with the message 'Opening floppy drive' and then opens the root
>>> directory in Nautilus. >media>floppy or floppy0 then displays the floppy files and floppy icon appears on the Desktop. Floppy mounted and now accessible.
>>>       
>> Hmm, looks like my system does it too.
>>
>> After a bit of searching, it appears to be a reported bug with Ubuntu.
>> See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/66869.
>> Priority is low and it was reported late 2006, so it may not get fixed
>> any time soon.
>>
>> Changing your fstab entry from noauto to auto will only result in the
>> system trying to mount the floppy every time it boots - the
>> noauto/auto flags control what gets mounted when the command 'mount
>> -a' is run. As this command is run in the boot scripts, the
>> auto/noauto flags are typically used to control what gets mounted
>> automatically at boot time.
>>
>> In short, all you can really do is work around it and wait for a fix
>> (or, of course, delve deep into the GNOME/nautilus subsystems to find
>> the culprit and be the savior of floppy-drive-using people everywhere
>> :).
>>
>> However, you can write a quick shell script that emulates the correct
>> behaviour:
>>
>> #!/bin/bash
>> mount /media/floppy
>> nautilus /media/floppy
>>
>> Copy the above three lines into a file on your Desktop called
>> openfloppy.sh (make sure the #! line is at the very start of the
>> file), then in a terminal run 'chmod +x ~/Desktop/openfloppy.sh'
>> (without quotes).
>>
>> Once you've done that, you can open the file on your desktop, choose
>> 'Run' and you'll get your floppy displayed. You can unmount the floppy
>> in the usual way (right-click on the floppy icon that appears and
>> choose 'Unmount Volume').
>>
>> Hope that helps.
>>
>> -Patrick
>>
>>     
>
> I haven't used Ubuntu in a while but from my understanding /etc/fstab has
> nothing to do with automounting. The software that does any automounting is
> automountd or amutils. Have a look and see if either of these are installed.
>
> Adam.
>
>   
Thank you, Arie, the information on the fstab file was helpful, but I'm 
currently using Patrick's solution. Neither automountd nor am-utils were 
installed Adam, but Synaptic provided am-utils which I have installed 
but not yet configured. It looks a bit complicated and when I get some 
time I'll follow up on that to get the system right. It's interesting 
tho', both cd and flash drives do the right thing, and if I remove them 
without specifically unmounting, Ubuntu warns that the last operation 
may be written. All according to the book for them but not the floppy.
I agree not much use for floppies now but I do have a specific need at 
this time.

Thank you all for helping

Dave