Having trouble copying stuff to floppy in linux.

[MBrown]

Ok I mounted it. Opened up the floppy. Right click on my paper and clicked copy, then I went over the the floppy window, right click and pressed paste. I took the floppy out went to my moms pc with windows opened up the floppy and the file wasnt there. What am I doing wrong?

 

[TGS]

You verified the write completed, and the floppy is formatted FAT?

Also if you installed samba, you could use that for file transfer rather than sneakernet.

 

[nweaver]

also may want to unmount the floppy

 

[MBrown]

It wont let me format it. You right click on the floppy icon and there should be a format option right? its not there. And how do you verify that a write is complete?

 

[TGS]

linkage

 

[MBrown]

Originally posted by: nweaver
also may want to unmount the floppy

You did it. Thanks

Thanks for the link too TGS

 

[Hyperblaze]

1) put floppy in disk drive
2) open up a console
3) cd to location to copy from
4) mcopy files a:/
6) remove floppy

 

[Nothinman]

That tutorial covers a lot of crap you don't need. Just mounting and umounting the thing will be good enough, if you don't umount it you will get what you saw. The file wasn't there becaue it was still in the page cache, to make sure the device is synchronized you have to umount the thing first. You could setup the device to be mounted sync and then the writes would take longer (like Windows) and you would have a better chance of the data being there, but in both cases you should make sure you umount the device before pulling it.

 

[drag]

Yep.

Linux uses asyncronious file transfers. If you listen for the floppy activity very actual work is done as you move and copy files around on the floppy. When you do the umount command to un-mount the floppy, then you'll notice the flurry of activity as the file actually gets written completely to it.

Sometimes the entire file gets written and you'll get lucky by just yanking the disk, but 9 times out of 10 the file only partially gets written until you do the umount.

On PC's the manual eject button on the floppy drive is a bit of a throwback to ancient PC times. You'll notice that modern drives like cdrom stuff the eject button can be over-rided by software if the drive is still busy when you press the button.

Like on macs they make you do the 'umount' but instead of typing out the command or right clicking on a icon or whatnot they make you drag the floppy to the trash and then the system automaticly ejects the floppy.

In Windows the file is always written immediately to the drive, which is why you can simply yank it out once the floppy drive light turns off, or at least you don't hear any sounds anymore.

 

[TGS]

It's been a while since I've done floppy writes. Though I was fairly certain it paged writes until the unmount, I didn't want to spread any disinformation. The page also has a good amount of information overload, it goes above and beyond just CLI. To which I think the OP would rather have the GUI options laid out.

 

[Jeff7]

Might I ask what the point of mounting and unmounting drives is then? Sounds like little more than extra steps.

 

[Nothinman]

Might I ask what the point of mounting and unmounting drives is then? Sounds like little more than extra steps.

There are automounters out there, the kernel doesn't do it automatically because then they would have to impose a mount point policy and the general concensus is that as little policy as possible should be enforced by the kernel. You may want to mount yours at /media/floppy and I may prefer /mnt/floppy. Windows imposes policy by making you mount your floppy at a:, at least they let you change where most other drives get mounted.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Might I ask what the point of mounting and unmounting drives is then? Sounds like little more than extra steps.

It's what you do with all drives. Harddrive partitions, cdroms, floppies, network shares. It's all the same. You mount the drive to a directory, then you use it, when you want to stop using it you un-mount it and then the OS knows finish all I/O with that drive and not use it anymore.

All OS's basicly work that way. Stuff like Microsoft just hides it away and sometimes it causes problems. All it is is you telling the OS that you want to use this paticular file system and were to put it in your directory tree.

There are no C: or A: drives in Linux. Everything is part of the directory system.

It allows you to do handy stuff. For instance I have a seperate partition for my /boot directory and that partition is mounted at /boot. In the boot directory is stored the boot loader configuration file as well as initrd and kernel images. I have it mounted read-only normally so that I don't have to worry about power outages or other accidents from corrupting anything in that directory. When I need to write to it I simply remount it read-write then make the changes I want.

With a modern Linux GUI the OS will set it up so that when you stick a cdrom into the drive it will autodetect it, mount it, and put a little icon on your desktop. Or if it's audio disk then it will play it or if it's dvd movie it will allow you to watch it if you have the semi-illegal software (thank you US law) that is required to simply view dvd movies in Linux.

The same thing would work for floppies except that in PC-land we use very obsolete versions of floppy drives that don't have the ability to tell the OS when you insert the drive. Also it lacks the ability to disable the eject button when the disk is in use.

 

[Tbirdkid]

this is the only problem i have with linux... you have to manually do everything. not that i dont use nix... i just prefer windows when i am doing stuff like that. i use nix for docs, email, etc. windows for gaming and burning.

 

[Nothinman]

You don't have to manually do everything, I have more stuff automated in Linux than I ever did in Windows.

 

[nweaver]

I think the directory/mounting is where linux REALLY shines over windows. I would kill to be able to do some of that stuff on my windows boxes. Also, it's much easier to automate when you have a decent shell/decent tools (I love perl)

 

[Tbirdkid]

but the problem is that not everyone knows all this stuff. i know, windows makes us dumb... but it also just works. certain programs you have to get from repositories isnt the best way to do things i think. that is all. i enjoy using linux... its just got quite a bit of a way to go until it really takes over the desktop environment.

 

[nweaver]

Apt-get install, or emerge are harder then scouring the web, downloading unknown executables and getting malware trying ot find the right program?

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: Tbirdkid
but the problem is that not everyone knows all this stuff. i know, windows makes us dumb... but it also just works. certain programs you have to get from repositories isnt the best way to do things i think. that is all. i enjoy using linux... its just got quite a bit of a way to go until it really takes over the desktop environment.

It's not making you dumb. It's just putting the windows hood over the operations, and keeps you ignorant of the process.

I personally find troubleshooting issues in a Linux environment much easier due to the fact that when an error occurs it will tell you point blank, "Syntax xxx wrong on line 234, go fix it". For Windows I get, "Event ID xxx, Windows has rebooted from a bugcheck. Contact your system administrator." To where I have to check the dumps, or hope I was at the screen on a BSoD, then proceed to hit up technet. All that just to figure out what my problem really is, let alone find the fix.

In something like apt-get or emerge, as long as you aren't using experimental repositories you should be fine. To get "suspect" packages requires manual intervention on the part of the end user though.

 

[Jeff7]

Ok, so mounting seems roughly analogous to mapping a network drive in Windows - just giving the operating system a place to do work.

Originally posted by: Tbirdkid
but the problem is that not everyone knows all this stuff. i know, windows makes us dumb... but it also just works. certain programs you have to get from repositories isnt the best way to do things i think. that is all. i enjoy using linux... its just got quite a bit of a way to go until it really takes over the desktop environment.

Agreed. My usual shtick with this thing is, Anandtech's regular forum posters are not good examples of the regular public. The fact that anyone here even FOUND the forums attests to some level of computer skill, believe it or not.
Just the concept of A:, C:, etc is complicated enough for some people. Mounting drives to diffrent folders of a user's choice is too much complexity. People want to be able to plug a USB drive in, and it'll say "Thumbdrive ready, click on Thumbdrive icon to begin." Having to mount /mnt/usb-drive or something like that....I don't know if I'd know how to do that, if that's even how it's done.
Now, sure I like customization too, so maybe a few versions or settings could be added - Standard, Power User, Advanced. Standard is highly automated and very intuitive. Each successive stage after that adds the ability to customize (and screw up) various settings.

 

[TGS]

Actually in Linux you could. It might require setting up the fstab to mount your thumbdrive and have it show up as Brand X ThumbDrive. Though it is possible. We still refer to the raw device links for simplicity. It's also a standardized naming convention. If someone is troubleshooting a floppy issue. I may call my /dev/fd0 /mnt/FlopE in my fstab. So when I ask for help if someone says to run umount /mnt/Floppy and my fstab doesn't have that entry, it won't work for me. Though for the person helping it may work on their system. Going with the deeper level /dev/fd0 almost ensures that if the device is setup correctly, any fix actions against the low level link should work.

 

[Nothinman]

Mounting drives to diffrent folders of a user's choice is too much complexity. People want to be able to plug a USB drive in, and it'll say "Thumbdrive ready, click on Thumbdrive icon to begin."

And that's what happens. If you plugin a USB drive in Gnome an icon will appear on the desktop for it. This isn't really possible for floppies because there's no indication to the kernel that a disk has been inserted in the drive.

 

[n0cmonkey]

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, etc. are complicated. They don't mean anything. /mnt/floppy, /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/usb all mean something to me.

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, etc. are complicated. They don't mean anything. /mnt/floppy, /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/usb all mean something to me.

<sigh> I completely agree with you... finding a way to get Windows users to understand that, though, is the challenge. Most people, it seems, prefer to memorize that A: = floppy, C: = hard drive, D: = CD-ROM, etc.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: GeekDrew

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, etc. are complicated. They don't mean anything. /mnt/floppy, /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/usb all mean something to me.

<sigh> I completely agree with you... finding a way to get Windows users to understand that, though, is the challenge. Most people, it seems, prefer to memorize that A: = floppy, C: = hard drive, D: = CD-ROM, etc.

What's E: though?