This is pretty strange. Its a workstation with an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard (nforce2 chipset). In the past, when I had my last gentoo installation on this machine (mm-sources 2.6.7 and udev), floppy access worked without any problem. I just did a fresh install on this machine, took latest mm-sources (2.6.8.1-mm3), and now I can't access /dev/fd0 any more. This is, what comes up in dmesg: ----- floppy: controller ACPI FDC0 at I/O 0x3f7-0x3f7 irq 6 dma channel 2 Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M floppy0: Floppy io-port 0x03f7 in use ----- This is, what I can find in /dev: ----- brw-rw---- 1 root floppy 2, 0 22. Aug 16:04 /dev/fd0 ----- The first strange thing is, that it is not showing up under "Block Devices" in /proc/devices. And finally when I try to mount my floppy, it gives the following error message (translated from German to English): ----- mount: /dev/fd0 is no valid block device ----- It can not be a kernel config issue, all items concerning this matter have been checked there. I am running a complete "~x86" system, so the latest udev version is installed. I have no idea, what else to look at. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: fresh installation on an ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard (nforc2) complete "~x86" system with latest mm-sources (2.6.8.1-mm3), udev-030, gcc-3.3.4, glibc-2.3.4.20040808-r0, linux26-headers, NPTL enabled Actual Results: During the installation (from a gentoo system on another harddrive with mm-sources 2.6.7 & udev) access to floppy was normal, after the installation was finished, no access to floppy possible any more Expected Results: normal operation of /dev/fd0 One strange thing I experienced: On two other machines with gentoo installed (stable x86 system with development-sources 2.6.8.1 & udev-030) /dev/fd0 is a symlink to /dev/floppy/0, but not on this latest installation
Can you please show us the same part of the dmesg output from a kernel where the floppy is working?
Ok, I just did some more tests, and it seems to be indeed a problem with kernel 2.6.8.1! At first I tried 2.6.8.1-love1 with the same result as with 2.6.8.1-mm3. But then I tried development-sources-2.6.7, and access to floppy is working again! This is the dmesg output: ----- Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077 ----- Maybe some changes in the floppy recognition / ACPI section, as the output in dmesg is pretty different? If bugs.gentoo.org is not the right place to handle this bug, can someone please forward this matter to the appropriate place?
I found others with this problem, I'm fairly certain that this patch will solve your issues: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=109302299916450&w=2 I've sent it to be applied into a future gentoo-dev-sources release.
Included in gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r3 thanks to Greg KH.
