Linux Mint Forums

Each time I start Mint 14, Mate, on my desktop (a new install, 32 bit) I get the message:
Unab le to mount Floppy Disk
Drror mounting system-managed device /dev/fd0: Command-line 'mount"media/floppy0"' exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: /dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

How do I remove this annoying message each time I boot. Clicking on OK solves the problem, but would like to remove it for good.

Does your machine actually *have* a floppy drive? If not, then boot into your machine's BIOS, check if there is a floppy drive specified there, and remove it if there is.

I had the same problem with Mint 14 (both MATE and Cinnamon) because I was running them in VMware virtual machines with no floppy drive defined but the BIOS settings for the VMs said that there *was* a floppy drive. After I updated the BIOS the error went away,

Changed the BIOS boot order: DVD, SATA HD, then floppy (which should not be 'reached' when the HD is accessed.
Changing the boot order did not solve the problem of the error message

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1054414 #42/43

Canuck wrote:Changing the boot order did not solve the problem of the error message

I didn't mean the boot order, I meant whether the BIOS indicated that a floppy drive actually existed:

I had to change that setting to "Disabled" to make the error message go away.

Hi,
I recently installed Linux Mint Mate and Linux Mint Cinnamon on the same machine.
The error message "unable to mount floppy disk" only happens with Linux Mate and not with Cinnamon.
The machine is Dell XPS Gen 4, which actually has a legacy floppy drive, normally it has no floppy in the drive, it is in a non ready state.
The question is why is Linux Mate try to mount the floppy even if there is no floppy disk in the drive ?
If I leave a floppy disk in the drive the message does not show and the actual floppy is mounted and shows on the desktop.
I think the mount should only occur when the floppy is actually inserted in the drive or when a command is issued to mount the floppy..

Why is this specific behavior different between Mate 14 and Cinnamon 14 ?
I tried all the different suggestions I found on this thread to eliminate this annoying message, but none of them worked.

Perhas somebody that understands how this works could try to find out the difference setting between Mate and Cinnamon and fix the problem in the Mate version the same way that it is solved in the Cinnamon version.
With the Cinnamon version I actually need to issue the the command " udisks --mount /dev/fd0 " while the Mate version tries to to that automatically as I log in ?
I compared the various settings suggested in the thread, but they all look the same on the 2 versions. Apparently nobody pinpointed yet the actual difference that is causing the different behavior of the Mate 14 versus Cinnamon 14.
Is there any fix that actually works for this unwanted message ?
Thanks,
F.G.

Hi all,
Finally I found the right answer to this problem in Linux Mint MATE. This was from a Linux user of ubuntu.
To eliminate the error that happens after every reboot or login, uncheck the preference option of media_automount using mateconf-editor.

mateconf-editor: /apps/caja/preferences/media_automount

This worked fine for me without disabling the floppy that I can still mount if I need to.

This also explains why the problem was only occurring with Linux MATE and not with CINNAMON which evidently does not try this automount.
Thanks, F.G.

Sorry to just barge in, but I, too, have that annoying "Unable to mount floppy disk" after logging in to Mint 14 (Mate").

What exactly does this do?

Short description: Whether to automatically mount media
Long description: If set to true, then Caja will automatically mount media such as user-visible hard disks and removable media on start-up and media insertion.

Changing that setting won't mess up any other things, will it?

-----
Edit: please disregard my questions; I will continue here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=117689

That is not good because it will affect automatic mount of external devices, like hard disks, cdrom...

Just ran into this error message with a fresh install of Mint.

If you're having a hard time getting the bios to come up in VMWare Fusion, see here: http://raamdev.com/2008/accessing-the-v ... sion-bios/

(Through Terminal / cmd line, edit the *.vmx file to include this line:

bios.forceSetupOnce = "TRUE"

This will force your VM into the Bios on your next reboot).

fgg2001 wrote:Hi all,
Finally I found the right answer to this problem in Linux Mint MATE. This was from a Linux user of ubuntu.
To eliminate the error that happens after every reboot or login, uncheck the preference option of media_automount using mateconf-editor.

mateconf-editor: /apps/caja/preferences/media_automount

This worked fine for me without disabling the floppy that I can still mount if I need to.

This also explains why the problem was only occurring with Linux MATE and not with CINNAMON which evidently does not try this automount.
Thanks, F.G.

Thanks that worked for me

If you cant get to the bios in VMWare Player, try changing the Network Adapter status so it's NOT connected at boot, F2 should then work.