Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

a newbie question: unknown device

2 views
Skip to first unread message

Gabe

unread,
Nov 20, 2001, 4:17:42 AM11/20/01
to
I am using Mandrake8.1 and neither as root or a normal user I am able
to mount my floppy drive in Linux. 'mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0'
returns 'mount: /dev/fd0: unknown device'.
Any ideas.

P.S:
If this question seem to simple or stupid for this ng please ignore
this post.
Thanks in advance for your reply
Gabe
anews...@hotmail.com

Kosh Vader

unread,
Nov 20, 2001, 4:52:43 AM11/20/01
to
Try this: Reboot your system, and at the boot prompt (press ESC if
you have a graphical LILO boot screen), type "linux nobiospnp".

According to Mandrake 8.1 Errata:
"The PNP_BIOS does not initalize the floppy controller like the BIOS."

If this trick works out, then to make this permanent, edit your
"/etc/lilo.conf" file to have a line something like

append=" devfs=mount nobiospnp"

located under the section of your currently used kernel.

Chris

Gabe

unread,
Nov 21, 2001, 3:08:43 AM11/21/01
to
thanks Chris,
i visited mandrake site for information about my problem before
posting my message in this ng but the only errata information about
floppy where on this page
http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/admin/amount3.html
and it did not mention in any way that solution
thanks again!
Gabe

>append=" devfs=mount nobiospnp"

Gabe

unread,
Nov 22, 2001, 6:59:45 AM11/22/01
to
ehm I've tried to insert this line on the /etc/lilo.conf
but after the reboot I've experimented the same problem: unknow device
:-( any other idea

> >append=" devfs=mount nobiospnp"

Lurch

unread,
Nov 23, 2001, 2:36:47 PM11/23/01
to
Gabe wrote:

> I am using Mandrake8.1 and neither as root or a normal user I am able
> to mount my floppy drive in Linux. 'mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0'
> returns 'mount: /dev/fd0: unknown device'.
> Any ideas.

The file /dev/fd0 exists, doesn't it? What are it's major and minor number?
You can find it out with (ls -l /dev/fd0). It would give something like:
brw-rw---- 1 lurch floppy 2, 0 Aug 30 22:30 /dev/fd0
The major number is 2 and the minor number is 0

Check if the major number in /proc/devices
cat /proc/devices

If you don't have the /dev/fd0 at all, try creating one with mknod:
cd /dev; mknod fd0 b 2 0


Hope this helped

--
Home: http://users.skynet.be/bk333466/
OS: RedHat Linux 7.2 (kernel 2.4.12)
X: KDE 2.2.2-1 (XFree86-4.0.1-3, QT-2.3.2-1)

0 new messages