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Same computer, under Ubuntu 8.04 no problem at all. Under 12.04, floppy drive is non existent for Ubuntu. Drive and floppy disquette works well on DOS. Computer boots from the floppy W98se, no problem at all.

How I can use floppys under Ubuntu 12.04 ?.

4
  • 5
    I like how you use a floppy drive and call the disk 'disquette'. +1
    – turbo
    Jul 26, 2012 at 22:13
  • Do you actually have a floppy drive (5.25" or 8")? Don't you mean really a "firmy"? (3.5" rigid case, sliding access window)
    – david6
    Apr 4, 2014 at 6:11
  • From another question, this worked for me: askubuntu.com/a/338203/259718
    – B. Fife
    Apr 17, 2014 at 6:33
  • Rodney Eric Gaines's answer worked a treat in Ubuntu 12.04 with a USB Floppy Drive. Also, inserting a disk automatically mounted and opened a Nautilus window in this situation. May 14, 2014 at 6:06

4 Answers 4

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  1. Check if the floppy module is loaded:

    lsmod | grep -i floppy
    

    This command should not return anything. If it returns "floppy" then you have the floppy module loaded and this answer does not solve your problem.

    If you want to load the floppy module:

    sudo modprobe -v floppy
    lsmod | grep -i floppy
    
  2. Try adding your username in the floppy group:

    sudo adduser $USER floppy
    
  3. You could also try installing fdutils package:

    $ apt-cache show fdutils
    Package: fdutils
    [...]
    Description-en: Linux floppy utilities
     This package contains utilities for formatting extra capacity
     disks, automatic floppy disk mounting and unmounting, etc.
     .
     The package includes the following items:
     .
      - superformat: formats high capacity disks (up to 1992k
        for high density disks or up to 3984k for extra density
         disks);
      - fdmount: automatically mounts/unmounts disks when they are
        inserted/removed;
      - xdfcopy: formats, reads and writes OS/2's XDF disks;
      - MAKEFLOPPIES: creates the floppy devices in /dev;
      - getfdprm: prints the current disk geometry (number of
        sectors, track and heads etc.);
      - setfdprm: sets the current disk geometry;
      - fdrawcmd: sends raw commands to the floppy driver;
      - floppycontrol: configures the floppy driver;
      - general documentation about the floppy driver.
     .
     Note that these utilities do not work for USB floppy drives, because
     these do not allow direct access to the floppy controller.
    Homepage: http://fdutils.linux.lu/
    

    fdmount seems useful. Try: sudo fdmount -l

  4. Check if your floppy drive is listed here:

    nautilus computer://
    
  5. If you're still facing problems, post the output of the above commands, plus this:

    dmesg > dmesg.log
    gedit dmesg.log
    

Post the content of dmesg.log to a pastebin somewhere (i.e. http://www.pastebin.com ) and give us the link.

P.S. You may be suffering from this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/441835 -- Try:

udisks --mount /dev/fd0
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    modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'floppy': No such device Jan 31, 2021 at 4:25
7

Here's the actual answer to make the floppy drive work.

  1. open the terminal and login as sudo

  2. open gedit as sudo

  3. Open and edit this file: /lib/udev/rules.d/80-udisks.rules

  4. find this section of it (it's near the bottom. You can use "Search" on gedit's tool bar and find "PC floppy" it will take you to it.

    ####################################################
    
    # PC floppy drives
    #
    KERNEL=="fd*", ENV{ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY}="0"
    
    # USB floppy drives
    #
    SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{bInterfaceClass}=="08", ATTRS{bInterfaceSubClass}=="04", ENV{ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY}="0"
    
    # ATA Zip drives
    #
    ENV{ID_VENDOR}=="*IOMEGA*", ENV{ID_MODEL}=="*ZIP*", ENV{ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY_ZIP}="0"
    
    #####################################################
    
  5. Replace all the "1"s with "0"s like I've done in 3 areas. (Your script will have "1"s, I'm showing the corrected portion) Which look like this: ENV{ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY}="0"

  6. Restart the PC and Floppy support you will have.

Note: Floppy WILL NOT auto launch a window when inserted, they were made before that! You will need to go to "places" or "My Computer" and double click on it. Remember to unmount it as you would a USB stick (or should a USB stick) otherwise Your next floppy you insert won't mount. Also remember to eject the floppy before restarting (internal) as your PC will try to boot from it, which can be very annoying.

3
  • This worked for me on 18.04
    – SPRBRN
    Aug 16, 2019 at 15:18
  • @SPRBRN I have only /lib/udev/rules.d/80-udisks2.rules in 18.04.
    – jarno
    Dec 14, 2019 at 16:06
  • besides I did not have to change "1"s to "0"s in the file, even if there were "1"s.
    – jarno
    Dec 14, 2019 at 16:23
1

Answer developed with Ubuntu 20.04 (see lsb_release) and kernel version 5.4.0-137-generic (see uname -r).

Mounting. Ubuntu recognized and mounted immediately an untouched 1.44MB 3.5" floppy disk inserted into an external USB floppy drive. In my case, the disk got auto-mounted to a /dev/sdc device, rather than a /dev/fd* one as you may find around. gparted recognized a FAT16 filesystem in it. As you may know, floppy disks were sold already formatted.

ufiformat. I found the tool ufiformat useful to learn more about the disk. This tool has been in the package kit since Bionic: see https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=ufiformat&searchon=names&suite=all&section=all. It is aimed at formatting the disks, but the flag -i shows device information only: see the manual pages at https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/man8/ufiformat.8.html. See this other post for getting insights from the 'generic drives' \dev\sg: https://community.clearlinux.org/t/solved-how-to-handle-usb-floppy-drive-formatting-mounting-etc/905/6 This will help you see if you deal with a corrupted medium. Also, the information gave me confidence about the correct device file of the floppy disk.

Folklore. There's been some talk about floppy support being orphaned in the Linux kernel and the death of the floppy disk. See Torvalds' own commit message https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/47d6a7607443ea43dbc4d0f371bf773540a8f8f4 of 2019 concerning the kernel version 5.3. Something remedial or less ominous must have happened in the meantime, since I could read a healthy disk seamlessly with a kernel 5.4.

Basically, the only troubles I experienced are with floppy disks used and corrupted, not with the operating system and the distribution. I hope this is the case with Ubuntu 22 and onwards too.

1

When I checked status of my usb floppy with "Disk Utility" I noticed that my floppy was showing as mounted at /dev/sdd.

I changed the medigeek's answer from:

udisks --mount /dev/fd0

To:

udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdd

Now my usb floppy mounts in Ubuntu 22.04

(For older Ubuntu versions, try udisks --mount /dev/sdd)

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