Re: Changing floppy0 ownership

[Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl>]

On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 17:47:45 -0700, George Langford wrote:
> I originally groaned:
> 
> > I use the following line in my fstab file:
> > > /dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  msdos    rw,user,noauto  0       0
> >
> > Then (as george) I mount the floppy disk thusly:
> > > sudo mount -t msdos -o owner /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0
> >
> > But when I attempt to write to the floppy, it turns out to be write-
> > protected. ... snippage ...
> 
> > Is this what I should be doing to mount the floppy ?
> > > sudo mount -t msdos -o george /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0
> 
> To which Florian helpfully noted:
> 
> > You probably forgot to add your user to the "floppy" group. Users in
> > that group should have read/write access to the device; the "user"
> > option in your fstab should make it possible to mount without using
> > sudo. If that does not work you should check the permissions of the
> > device:
> > $ ls -l /dev/fd0
> > brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 0 2006-05-18 17:18 /dev/fd0
> >
> That's exactly what I get:
> > ls -l /dev/fd0
> > brw-rw----  1 root floppy 2, 0 2006-06-02 12:01 /dev/fd0
> 
> Nevertheless, I scampered over to:
> http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/109
> 
> And attempted to make appropriate corrections, but I soon discovered
> that george is already a member of the floppy (and sudo, cdrom but
> not fax) groups. Problemo non solvus ...
> 
> Don't give up yet - the weekend is still young.
> 
> Should I be checking the BIOS settings ? I've never encountered a
> "read-only" setting there ...

I don't remember if you mentioned it in your original message: Can you
actually write to the floppy if you are root? It might be that mount
detects some error/inconsistency in the file system, which would cause
it to mount read-only. If even root cannot write to the device it might
help to use the "debug" option to find out what is going on, or to try
"vfat" instead of "msdos". 

If root can write on the floppy then there is a permissions problem for
user george. Next thing to check are the permissions of the mount point:

ls -ld /media/{,floppy0}

(Both before and after you mount the device)

I would also try to add the "debug" option to the /etc/fstab entry and
check out what the messages are when you mount as user george. (Just
"mount /dev/fd0" without any further options given on the command line,
and no "sudo".)

-- 
Regards,
          Florian