fd0 not a block device

[Pantheus]

When I boot RH7.2 lately I have been seeing a [FAILED] in mount /dev/fd0 "is not a valid block device"

Hasn't bothered me as whenever I wanted to use the floppy I did: mount /dev/fd0 and it came to the party just fine and wrote/read

Here is the /etc/fstab and ls -l

[root@localhost root]# ls -l /dev/fd0
brw-rw----    1 ken      floppy     2,   0 Aug 30  2001 /dev/fd0

/etc/fstab

/dev/cdrom               /mnt/cdrom               iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1             /mnt/cdrom1             iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                    /mnt/floppy               vfat   auto,owner,kudzu 0 0

owner vs. users makes no difference in fd0

Why it's NOW a huge problem is that I just got my RH8.0 and tried to upgrade and that falls apart with:

Error mounting device fd0 as /mnt/floppy No such device or address OK to reboot? and that goes on for as long as I want to play the game.

I've googled for an answer, and found lots but none was the 'right' one, I've tried PETS and nothing jumped out that was clearly the problem

As root (not su) I tried depmod -a and it returned nothing (but completed)

Anyone have a clue what to try next?

[pbharris]

hello,
add modprobe floppy to teh end of /etc/rc.local, BTW at what point does this message appear?

[Pantheus]

Paul,

Assuming you meant the error message I get when trying to upgrade to RH 8? I get it right after the video / monitor / mouse are properly probed, and just after I check the upgrade box.

If you meant when do I get it when Linux is booting? I get that just after where it wants to fsk if I've shut down abruptly, and it appears twice once right after /boot: clean and before enabling file system and again after loading random number generator and before loading APM daemon

adding modprobe floppy to the end of /etc/rc.local didn't change anything ;-(

Ken

who fixed a spello/typo

[pbharris]

hi ken,
what is in the file /var/log/boot.log? I assume this is the default redhat kernel. also, in the file /etc/fstab are you mounting the floppy right away?

[Pantheus]

here's the last 5 hours of /var/log/boot.log

deleted as it isn't relevant any more

Here's the entire /etc/fstab

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/hda5               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1             /mnt/cdrom1             iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             vfat   auto,users,kudzu 0 0

It's default RH 7.2 kernel as best I know... (with win4lin mods, but that hasn't made any difference and win4lin has been there a long while.

Ken

[pbharris]

hey ken,
1. remove the word auto from the entry in /etc/fsatb by the floppy drive and replace it with noauto. That should do it, it looks like it wnats to mount the floppy on bootup, if this ia what ya want let us know.


2. Lets make sure it is a valid block device - here is the entry for a valid block device i.e. my floppy drive.

[pbharris@bugs ~]ls -l /dev/fd0
brw-rw----    1 pbharris floppy     2,   0 Apr 11 09:25 /dev/fd0
[pbharris@bugs ~]

yours should look much like this.

[Pantheus]

Paul,

Thanks ! This did it..

1. remove the word auto from the entry in /etc/fsatb by the floppy drive and replace it with noauto.

At least it got rid of the error on boot up, and got me past the 'not a block device' in anaconda of RH8.0 but.....

damn anaconda dies, with no error message, or reason just before it 'installs' the first fsking new file.

At least this time I bought a boxed set, (cheaply from cheapbytes) so have a serial number, and am going to start working the RH support to death...

Since I couldn't upgrade to 7.3 or 8.0 it appears I am stuck still at 7.2, although I have a new Mandrake 9.0 sitting here, should I get pissed enough to format and start all over.

[Schotty]

there should be an error log. Could you post that. If anaconda is dying off, there is obviously a reason. If worse comes to worse, we can test if perhaps the CD is bad.

[Pantheus]

hmmmmmmmmmm a log, huh? any clues where? I searched and found a few but none that seemed to be Psyche or RH 8 or RH or upgrade/install related.

as to media it is RH branded and I did a mediacheck on all three of them and all came up PASS

I also tried twice more today to upgrade and all attempts have resulted in stopping at same place, right after the Bluecurve banner comes up, and as it is ready to "install" glibc-common 202.93.5 Once I let it try for about 45 minutes in case I was getting too anxious and abandoned it too soon (nope)

[Schotty]

Most odd indeed .... Okay, obviousl you have tried doing an upgrade -- how about a fresh install? I used my RH8 discs to do an upgrade from Null, and it worked pretty well. I cant see what could be causing the error ... lemme sit back and think some more. There has to be a good reason that an install would fail (or upgrade for that matter).