no floppy dir in /media ? bug ????

[David Timms]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 3/12/06, David Timms <dtimms at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
>> Since floppy disk insertion aren't usually detectable, I guess you need
>> to use a tool like Michal suggested to mount it. But I don't have a
>> floppy drive on the couple of PC's that I have ;)
> 
> Perhaps its best not to comment if you don't have the hardware
> configuration to do a functionality comparison.. to avoid
> misrepresenting reality and avoid unnecessary confusion as to how
> things currently work.
Well, I guess I told a mistruth (you caught me out on that one). I do 
have a floppy disk drive (finding a floppy disk to test with it that 
doesn't have a heap of CRC errors is the hard bit)!

> For my system with a floppy when running Gnome, the floppy drive shows
> up in my Computer window and I can mount it via normal gnome
> filemanager or panel interactions.  From a gnome desktop pov this is
> absolutely no different from fc4 experience when using gnome desktop
> functionality.
Perhaps Larry was not previously running / comparing the situation to 
fc4, but to an older or other distribution ?

>  It doesn't matter that floppy media insertion can't be
> detected... 
I would still state that it is the exact reason why there is no 
/media/floppy directory created / showing by default. The question from 
Larry that I was trying to answer was:
 >> There is no /media/floppy.
 >> How come this ?

> gnome's file manager and gnome's disk mounter applet "see"
> the floppy drive because hal "sees" the floppy drive.  When using the
> gnome desktop, whether the fstab entry or the mountpoint exists
> doesn't matter.. gnome is using the information provided by hal to
> tell the desktop user that the devices exist.
Which I agree all works quite nicely, until you need to do scripted 
tasks at the commandline.

> What is different, for all devices not just the floppy, is interaction
> with mounting at the cmdline.  I think its pretty clear from past
> discussion on the list, when this changed was introduced.. that people
> who have grown use to the previous behavior of hal and fstab-sync to
> aid in cmdline mounting are going to be confused by the change.
We could help allay any confusion and turn it into knowledge if a worked 
over response / instructions made it to release notes or fedora wiki ?

<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=mount&titlesearch=Titles>

Having only been an oh-six newcomer to the test list, I welcome info to 
correct what I have learned so far in this thread: if we previously did:
# mount /dev/fd0
# cp /home/me/really-important-file /media/floppy
# umount /dev/fd0

is the suggested method now:
# gnome-mount -d /dev/fd0
# cp /home/me/really-important-file /media/floppy
# gnome-umount -d /dev/fd0 ?

gnome-mount is installed from gnome-mount-...rpm, and has a quite a few 
dependencies like gnome-vfs2 which needs libgnome, libbonobo and so 
forth. But it is installable / usable even if you aren't using the gnome 
desktop (for example one of my machines has only twm, and gnome-mount is 
already installed and working).

If you wanted the (u)mount stuff on a minimal router/firewall install of 
fedora where you are not willing to install gnome-mount (~80k and its 
18MB of requires), then the solution could be:
- create the folder manually (or in the script)
- add an entry to fstab (just to save on typing) (or give the full 
command in your script - then the script would be portable to another 
machine)
- rest as previously performed / scripted
?

 > Let's
> make sure we don't add additional confusion by giving them factually
> deficient information when they ask for an explanation.
 > On 3/12/06, Michal Jaegermann <michal at harddata.com> wrote:
 >> Could you point which part was factually deficient?
 >
 > in your comments... nothing.
 >
 > In david thimms comments the discussion of the fact that the floppy
 > media insertion is not detectable by the "authomounter" is inmaterial
 > to the problem.
The problem query was:
 >> There is no /media/floppy.
 >> How come this ?

DaveT.