Frequently asked question about the Linux floppy driver

Most of the floppy utilities mentioned in this FAQ can be found in the fdutils package. For others, consult the lsm or archie. Alpha releases of fdutils are named fduday month.taz or fdu5.3-day month.diff.gz

How do I access floppy drives in Linux?

Either use mtools or mount the disk. Mtools can be found at sunsite and tsx-11 It is a collection of utilities to access DOS disks. These utilities behave mostly like their DOS counterparts, i.e. mdir is like dir, mcopy is like copy, etc. Specifics are in the manpages.

To mount a disk on /mnt, use the following command lines:

 mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
The directory /mnt must already exist: 
 mkdir /mnt

How should I report bugs?

If you have a question or a bug report about the floppy driver, mail me at alain @ linux.lu . If you post to the news, use preferably one of the groups comp.os.linux.help (for questions) or comp.os.linux.hardware (for bug reports). As the volume in these groups is rather high, be sure to include the word "floppy" (or "FLOPPY") in the subject line.