howto disable floppy drive

[Jeff Vian]

On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 14:39 +0200, Roberto Felloni wrote:
> I have a big problem on boot.
> My server, after runs services, before graphical login, 
> show me black screen, led of hdd turn off, and make nothing 
> until 3-5 minutes ... 
> and I don't understand what's happen !!!
> 
> On messages log there are some lines than executes their job employing 
> 3 or 5 minutes.
> 
Show us the logs, Both dmesg and the relevant portions of
/var/log/messages that are related to the boot so we can see what is
happening. 

What is the last message on the console before the screen goes black?
That may point us to the area of the startup process where this delay is
occurring.

Mine sometimes may hang for a minute or two at the point of enabling
swap.  When that happens I can usually power down and restart and it
then comes up immediately without the hang.  I have even done a 'mkswap'
command on the swap partition and that has fixed it at times.  It seems
that shutting down may sometimes leave the swap partition dirty or
corrupted and the startup sees that and has to resolve the issue before
it can continue.

I do not believe this has anything to do with the creation of the mount
point for the floppy, cdrom, etc.  There is likely something else at the
heart of this delay.

> -----------------------------------------
> Jun 17 23:53:01 bear crond(pam_unix)[2799]: session opened for user
> root by (uid=0)
> Jun 17 23:53:01 bear fstab-sync[2798]: added mount point /media/cdrom
> for /dev/hdb
> Jun 17 23:53:01 bear crond(pam_unix)[2799]: session closed for user root
> Jun 17 23:53:06 bear fstab-sync[2875]: added mount point /media/floppy
> for /dev/fd0
> Jun 17 23:55:01 bear crond(pam_unix)[2898]: session opened for user
> root by (uid=0)
> Jun 17 23:55:04 bear crond(pam_unix)[2898]: session closed for user root
> Jun 17 23:58:38 bear gdm(pam_unix)[2812]: session opened for user root
> by (uid=0)
> -------------------------------------------
> 
> At first time I have turned off crond service, to try better startup
> and target the problem,
> but the time of boot aren't better than previous.
> 
> Now I wanna try to disable mounting of floppy drive.
> >From here my request to mailinglist.
> 
> some proposal ?
> 
> thanks for your interest.
> (sorry for the ignorance: I'm a Windoze user during day and Linux for
> my free time).
> 
> 2005/8/31, akonstam at trinity.edu <akonstam at trinity.edu>:
> > On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 01:26:23PM +0200, Roberto Felloni wrote:
> > > Hi list.
> > >
> > > I have tried to remove (with fstab-sync) settings on fstab for my floppy,
> > > bat without results.
> > > On fstab-sync man page I have read syntax to remove media,
> > > but I don't understand wat's UDI and where I can find it.
> > >
> > > ---- man fstab-sync ----------------------------------------------------------
> > > fstab-sync --remove=UDI
> > >       Remove an entry from fstab by giving a HAL
> > >       Unique Device Identifier
> > > ---- man fstab-sync ----------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > I have tried replacing UDI with
> > > - /dev/fd0
> > > - fd0
> > > - /media/floppy
> > > - floppy
> > >
> > > and any cases return to me error on a library.
> > >
> > > less /etc/fstab :
> > > -------------------
> > > LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
> > > LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
> > > none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> > > LABEL=/home             /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
> > > none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
> > > none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> > > LABEL=/usr              /usr                    ext3    defaults        1 2
> > > LABEL=/var              /var                    ext3    defaults        1 2
> > > /dev/hdc1               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> > > /dev/hdb                /media/cdrom            auto
> > > pamconsole,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
> > > /dev/fd0                /media/floppy           auto
> > > pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
> > >
> > THis is confusing. The fstab you post should prevent the floppy
> > mounting at boot . I assume it does not try to mount the CD on boot.
> > In both cases it is the: pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed
> > part of the fstab line that does it. I assume that this clause being
> > on a different line in your post is caused buy wraparound and actually
> > it is on the same line.
> > 
> > I guess not we must ask what makes you think that the system is
> > trying to mount the floppy at boot time?
> > 
> > --
> > 
> > =======================================================================
> > After all, it is only the mediocre who are always at their best.
> >                 -- Jean Giraudoux
> > -------------------------------------------
> > Aaron Konstam
> > Computer Science
> > Trinity University
> > telephone: (210)-999-7484
> >