[newbie] Re: Floppy problem
These mailing lists are great...everyone is so helpful. Best mailing list I've ever seen. Maybe y'all can help me too. I have a 3.5 floppy icon on the desktop which has a tiny green arrow at the bottom right corner... this means that the floppy is mounted. But this shows up as soon as I boot the computer, so the floppy is mounted from the time of boot. I can read and write to floppies and Konqueror will show the correct floppy contents when I change floppies, however, when I right-click and choose 'unmount', before ejecting the floppy, I get an error saying: umount: only root can unmount none from /mnt/floppy Please check that the disk is entered correctly. Still new to Linux and was told to never eject a floppy until it is unmounted. So, I have been leaving the darn thing mounted all the time, but ejecting the floppies anyway. Is it safe to just leave it alone and eject floppies whether it is unmounted or not? Or, is there some way I can fix this? My Mandrake 10.0 Community install does have some problems in its current state, and I have been hearing that other people have the same problems and will, hopefully, be fixed when the 'Official' release is out. However, as it is, Mandrake 10.0 beats anything else I have tried, including other distros, and I ain't going back to Windoze Ian MacGregor -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
On Thursday 15 April 2004 00:45, Ian MacGregor wrote: These mailing lists are great...everyone is so helpful. Best mailing list I've ever seen. Maybe y'all can help me too. Maybe...at least we'll try... I have a 3.5 floppy icon on the desktop which has a tiny green arrow at the bottom right corner... this means that the floppy is mounted. But this shows up as soon as I boot the computer, so the floppy is mounted from the time of boot. I can read and write to floppies and Konqueror will show the correct floppy contents when I change floppies, however, when I right-click and choose 'unmount', before ejecting the floppy, I get an error saying: umount: only root can unmount none from /mnt/floppy Please check that the disk is entered correctly. This means that you probably have supermount enabled. If so, you can safely eject the floppy without unmounting it first. But wait a second or 3 depending on your sync frequency. Still new to Linux and was told to never eject a floppy until it is unmounted. So, I have been leaving the darn thing mounted all the time, but ejecting the floppies anyway. Is it safe to just leave it alone and eject floppies whether it is unmounted or not? Or, is there some way I can fix this? You have done your homework well. Until the arrival of a (functional) supermount exactly that was the gospel. My Mandrake 10.0 Community install does have some problems in its current state, and I have been hearing that other people have the same problems and will, hopefully, be fixed when the 'Official' release is out. However, as it is, Mandrake 10.0 beats anything else I have tried, including other distros, and I ain't going back to Windoze Ian MacGregor The Official release is out. Of course there are problems. Consider the huge variations in hardware combinations and it would be a miracle if Mandrake (or any other OS) installed without a hiccup somewhere. But that's what this list is for (amongst others). Welcome to the free community ! Kaj Haulrich. -- * Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free computer * * running Linux kernel 2.6.4 on Mandrake 10.0 * Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
1. My Mandrake 10.0 Community installed without one single problem and it correctly recognised all my hardware - guess I was one of the lucky ones. 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? Thank you, y'all are great! Maybe I need to join a LUG or something. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 4:14 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 00:45, Ian MacGregor wrote: These mailing lists are great...everyone is so helpful. Best mailing list I've ever seen. Maybe y'all can help me too. Maybe...at least we'll try... I have a 3.5 floppy icon on the desktop which has a tiny green arrow at the bottom right corner... this means that the floppy is mounted. But this shows up as soon as I boot the computer, so the floppy is mounted from the time of boot. I can read and write to floppies and Konqueror will show the correct floppy contents when I change floppies, however, when I right-click and choose 'unmount', before ejecting the floppy, I get an error saying: umount: only root can unmount none from /mnt/floppy Please check that the disk is entered correctly. This means that you probably have supermount enabled. If so, you can safely eject the floppy without unmounting it first. But wait a second or 3 depending on your sync frequency. Still new to Linux and was told to never eject a floppy until it is unmounted. So, I have been leaving the darn thing mounted all the time, but ejecting the floppies anyway. Is it safe to just leave it alone and eject floppies whether it is unmounted or not? Or, is there some way I can fix this? You have done your homework well. Until the arrival of a (functional) supermount exactly that was the gospel. My Mandrake 10.0 Community install does have some problems in its current state, and I have been hearing that other people have the same problems and will, hopefully, be fixed when the 'Official' release is out. However, as it is, Mandrake 10.0 beats anything else I have tried, including other distros, and I ain't going back to Windoze Ian MacGregor The Official release is out. Of course there are problems. Consider the huge variations in hardware combinations and it would be a miracle if Mandrake (or any other OS) installed without a hiccup somewhere. But that's what this list is for (amongst others). Welcome to the free community ! Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
On Thursday 15 April 2004 01:28, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? /snip You can do it by editing (as root) /etc/fstab. But why ? Until a few months ago supermount was a pain in the ass and we all had to disable it, meaning we had to mount everything manually, such as floppies, CD's, USB devices (cameras and such) and one thing and another. Those were the good old days. We were in control. Nowadays, it's different : supermount is an approximation to the dumbded-down attitude of a very inferior operating system that assumes everyone to be an idiot. The beauty of linux is, however : YOU are in control. You can choose to mount whatever filesystem to your hearts content. Be it a network, a CD, a floppy or whatever. Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable it. Just my opinion. Kaj Haulrich. -- * Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free computer * * running Linux kernel 2.6.4 on Mandrake 10.0 * Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
Yes, but the floppy formatter doesn't work while the floppy drive is mounted. How do I format floppies? Besides booting with a LiveCD (Knoppix) and using their format floppy tool. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 6:26 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 01:28, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? /snip You can do it by editing (as root) /etc/fstab. But why ? Until a few months ago supermount was a pain in the ass and we all had to disable it, meaning we had to mount everything manually, such as floppies, CD's, USB devices (cameras and such) and one thing and another. Those were the good old days. We were in control. Nowadays, it's different : supermount is an approximation to the dumbded-down attitude of a very inferior operating system that assumes everyone to be an idiot. The beauty of linux is, however : YOU are in control. You can choose to mount whatever filesystem to your hearts content. Be it a network, a CD, a floppy or whatever. Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable it. Just my opinion. Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
snip Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable i /snip I did disable it, and my system would not boot at all. I had to boot from a LiveCD and delete fstab and mtab and replace them with the old copies I made before I made any changes to them. Thank God I always make backups of files before tinkering with them. Everyone should have a copy of a LiveCD. AlmostFreeLinux.com has MandrakeMove LiveCD for, I think, $5.00 - this really saved my ass. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 6:26 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 01:28, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip 2. Is there any way to disable supermount? If so, how and where? /snip You can do it by editing (as root) /etc/fstab. But why ? Until a few months ago supermount was a pain in the ass and we all had to disable it, meaning we had to mount everything manually, such as floppies, CD's, USB devices (cameras and such) and one thing and another. Those were the good old days. We were in control. Nowadays, it's different : supermount is an approximation to the dumbded-down attitude of a very inferior operating system that assumes everyone to be an idiot. The beauty of linux is, however : YOU are in control. You can choose to mount whatever filesystem to your hearts content. Be it a network, a CD, a floppy or whatever. Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable it. Just my opinion. Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
On Thursday 15 April 2004 03:42, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip Yes, but the floppy formatter doesn't work while the floppy drive is mounted. How do I format floppies? Besides booting with a LiveCD (Knoppix) and using their format floppy tool. /snip You cannot format anything mounted. Mounted means that a filesystem is active. If you want to format a floppy, umount it first. To do so, in a terminal (as root) type : umount /mnt/floppy. Then, you can format it to whatever filesystem you want. If I remember correctly there is an option in KDE : System -- Configuration -- Hardware -- Floppy Formatter. Or some such. Linux is about discovery. Eventually, if you are totally lost, type : man fdformat. HTH Kaj Haulrich. -- * Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free computer * * running Linux kernel 2.6.4 on Mandrake 10.0 * Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
Thank you, this is most helpful :) On Wednesday 14 April 2004 6:59 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 03:42, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip Yes, but the floppy formatter doesn't work while the floppy drive is mounted. How do I format floppies? Besides booting with a LiveCD (Knoppix) and using their format floppy tool. /snip You cannot format anything mounted. Mounted means that a filesystem is active. If you want to format a floppy, umount it first. To do so, in a terminal (as root) type : umount /mnt/floppy. Then, you can format it to whatever filesystem you want. If I remember correctly there is an option in KDE : System -- Configuration -- Hardware -- Floppy Formatter. Or some such. Linux is about discovery. Eventually, if you are totally lost, type : man fdformat. HTH Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
On Thursday 15 April 2004 03:46, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable i /snip I did disable it, and my system would not boot at all. I had to boot from a LiveCD and delete fstab and mtab and replace them with the old copies I made before I made any changes to them. Thank God I always make backups of files before tinkering with them. Everyone should have a copy of a LiveCD. /snip Good heavens, Ian - How did you disable supermount ??? Never in my days, since 7.0, did I have to reboot, so I'm just curious ? -- How did you do it ??? Kaj Haulrich. -- * Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free computer * * running Linux kernel 2.6.4 on Mandrake 10.0 * Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Re: Floppy problem
Here's a tip: Don't recompile your kernel unless you know what you're doing. Oh well, a complete re-install only takes an hour :) Live and learn... I guess. On Wednesday 14 April 2004 7:12 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2004 03:46, Ian MacGregor wrote: snip Supermount is OK now. But if you want to be in control, having the conn, decide for yourself and feel good, disable i /snip I did disable it, and my system would not boot at all. I had to boot from a LiveCD and delete fstab and mtab and replace them with the old copies I made before I made any changes to them. Thank God I always make backups of files before tinkering with them. Everyone should have a copy of a LiveCD. /snip Good heavens, Ian - How did you disable supermount ??? Never in my days, since 7.0, did I have to reboot, so I'm just curious ? -- How did you do it ??? Kaj Haulrich. -- - Registered Linux User #350412 MacGregor Despite Them! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
