Floppy drive icon behavior in mint 6 xfce rc 1

[joeham]

I am testing RC 1. I notice that it does not load the floppy module by default. I guess that is reasonable given they are seldom used now.

I added the floppy module with modprobe floppy. I get the pretty green floppy icon on desktop. The right click action gives option to mount, which works. Then when you want to unmount, right click gives an eject option, which gives an error and does not seem to unmount.

I tested this in mint xfce 5 and it seems like it is the same.

I run Zenwalk on this machine as well and its desktop floppy icon has the desired mount and unmount options.

I don't usually use the places applet on the panel, but just for grins I tried the floppy that is available there. Behold, I get the proper mount and unmount behavior.

I googled until my eyes glazed over and as best as I could tell this bug may have come from ubuntu? (x)buntu?

Can you mint guys lean on the debian / ubuntu guys to fix it? Some of us old guys still use floppys on occasion and it would be nice if old stuff continued to work.

I really like Mint distros and hope to switch over almost exclusively to xfce and mint.

Best Regards

[Husse]

That the floppy is not mounted is a bug in Intrepid we inherit
The machine I use now does not have a floppy...
I don't know if there is a difference if you have the floppy in fstab or not, it could be worth trying
The line in fstab would be similar to that of the CD

Code: Select all

/dev/fd0       /media/floppy   auto user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

Taken from memory.... not sure if exec should be there but it really does not make much of a difference

I tested this in mint xfce 5 and it seems like it is the same.

Really?

[joeham]

The behaviors are substantially the same between mint 5 xfce and mint 6 xfce rc1
Firstly, the floppy module is not loaded. Not really a problem since not many floppies any more.

Secondly, the icon on the desk top and short cut in Thunar have only Mount and Eject as the right click options.
In Slackware derived Zenwalk, I see that there is a choice of Mount and Unmount.

Thirdly, the floppy icon in the places on my lower panel, has right click options of Mount, Mount and open and after mounting it gives the choice of unmount.

In both versions the places icon works perfectly. So I guess that is what I will use unless I want to mount manually in CLI.

When you try to use the Eject option on the other icons, you get an error: Unable to eject, last error: Invalid command. The floppy is unmounted but after that the mount choice is grayed out in the desktop and shortcut icon.

The difference between Mint 5 and Mint 6 is that in 6 there is a nice pop up message in the lower right corner saying writing data and safe to eject the floppy, when you use unmount from the places icon.

I am curious what code runs the floppy icon. Is it part of xfce or some script some where. I am guessing that it is tied in with the HAL and udev thing because when I am root I can see a "hal mtab" and lock file in the media folder.

I was interested enough in this that I tried to research how the floppy icon works but it seems that it is only known to the initiated or those who read source code.....

I have learned to love how linux plays on old but venerable hardware. It's just a little sad that something as old as a floppy mounting icon could break like this.

[merlwiz79]

What happens if you change privileges in Users and Groups.
The privilege to use floppy drives is disabled by default.
This might be causing problems.

[joeham]

I checked with groups from command line. My non root user is part of floppy group. Root is not. Root belongs to only one group according to groups, root.

The xfce manage users and groups does not show the floppy group.

I guess I have run out of curiosity on this one. I am of the opinion that the code behind the icon is broken in mint5 and 6.

Since the CLI still works and the places still works, I will call it good and move on.

You guys do such a good job on mint, it's a shame that stuff comes in like this from the outside.

Thanks for trying to help. I am using xfce rc1 quite a bit now and its working quite well all in all.

[merlwiz79]

It's probably a bug coming from the xfce dev.
Like the missing icons from partitions mounted on other drives.
Hopefully XFCE 4.6 and ubuntu 9.04 fixes these.
If I had the time to learn how to fix it I would, but I can't learn from just reading the text about it.
I also don't have enough time to and it'll probably get fixed before I had the time for it.

[merlwiz79]

In Users and Groups.
Unlock and Select the correct user, then Click Manage Groups.
Click Add:
Group Name: floppy
Group ID: 25
Group Members: Check correct user name.