[plug] Floppy access after Edgy>Feisty upgrade

[Ian Kent]

On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 14:43 +0800, David Dartnall wrote:
> 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.

That package is called autofs in Linux and Solaris.
The configuration of both is much the same and much simpler than
am-utils (aka amd). I'm going to be describing simple autofs
configurations at this months seminar, next Tuesday. 

But, if you have a GUI then let it take care of the removable media. It
does a good job of it and needs no setup. Indeed, if you have hal (aka.
haldaemon) running it can cause problems when media is handled by both.

> 
> Thank you all for helping
> 
> Dave
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