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I am using Ubuntu 12.10, today update notification popped up and I updated the system, then it asked for restart, I was doing some stuff so I restarted after ~30 minutes, after restart, Ubuntu GUI was gone, there was no taskbar or unity, I fixed by entering this commands:

sudo apt-get install linux-source 
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current-updates
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates

... these commands fixed almost everything, unity is running, but there's problem when I go in terminal ctrl+alt+F1, before I write anything, many many messages appear, it says "Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0", what should I do?

Here's image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p2ezP.jpg

Another thing I noticed is that after few about an hour, messages disappear, this error keeps showing up for first hour roughly.

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4 Answers 4

15

This is indeed most likely an issue with Ubuntu thinking you have a floppy drive when you do not, and it thinks that because your BIOS is telling it to think that.

My BIOS is an Award Software BIOS; I believe Phoenix is the same company.

  1. At boot of computer, press DEL to enter BIOS setup (this might be a different key, but your post screen probably will tell you what to hit if it's not DEL.)

  2. In the BIOS, find the section that lists different drives (hard drives, floppies, etc). Mine was in Standard CMOS Features.

  3. Select Drive A, and change to None.

  4. Reboot, and your imaginary floppy won't be reported by the BIOS to Ubuntu!

Thank to Rrinzwind, who set me on finding out about disabling the floppy drive, and this forum thread which explained what was happening.

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  • Thank you for the answer, I am having problems with my BIOS lately and that's probably the issue. Thanks for the help.
    – Paul Dirac
    Dec 29, 2012 at 9:03
7

For my device (Ubuntu 16.04 Server on Dell C610) there is no setting to disable floppy in the BIOS and Rinzwind’s solution did not quite work. An update of initramfs was required. So i ran the following commands as root:

# rmmod floppy
# tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf <<<"blacklist floppy"
# dpkg-reconfigure initramfs-tools
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  • This is the right solution for me. The problem is fixed with simple reconfiguration on Ubuntu with no dependency on any changes on the BIOS of the system. In some cloud virtualized system you won't even have the chance to change the BIOS settings. Apr 23, 2023 at 22:33
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This message appears when you don’t have a floppy drive attached. Solution is quite simple just disable driver for floppy and reboot the system.

Disable it with the following edit:

vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Add to this file

blacklist floppy

and reboot. Messages should be gone.


Even easier (this does both in 1 line):

sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf <<<"blacklist floppy"
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  • Thanks for the help, but messages still show up, even after I edit config file.
    – Paul Dirac
    Nov 6, 2012 at 8:10
  • @PaulDirac did you reboot? You have to reboot or the kernel module will still be loaded
    – dwurf
    Nov 12, 2014 at 0:12
  • This solution is also OK and in the basics is the same approach as the response from @ominug above. I upvoted both and indeed this is the one I used (I prefer direct file edition for configuration changes) but the other is more the "Ubuntu" way, so I guess that is the best answer for regular people. Apr 23, 2023 at 22:31
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Try booting the live cd and when you are at the main menu of the live cd press F6 and add

all_generic_ide

to the end of the line as a boot option.

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  • You mean ubuntu live cd right? when I boot live cd, it doesn't show me any menus, after some waiting, it just gives me two options, "Try ubuntu" or "Install", may I add that line in grub menu? theres boot commands in grub menu if I press "e", should I add all_generic_ide there?
    – Paul Dirac
    Nov 6, 2012 at 11:57
  • I added it to the boot commands in grub menu but still nothing, and I can't make live cd to show it's menu for some reason, it just starts at the desktop.
    – Paul Dirac
    Nov 6, 2012 at 12:13

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