How do I use a floppy drive in Ubuntu?

Question

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 ?.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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:

udisks --mount /dev/sdd

Now my usb floppy mounts in Ubuntu 12.04