[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#561737: udisks, gvfs, nautilus: mounting floppies not working and prevents `mount` from working too

Mon Apr 23 15:52:08 UTC 2012

retitle 561737 udisks, gvfs, nautilus: mounting floppies not working (no media in drive)
forcemerge 561737 561746 592719 596890 622618
forwarded 561737 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30283
block 669973 by 561737
quit

Dear suffering floppy users,

in the future when replying to reports please import the message thread
into your mail program beforehand so the threading keeps intact.

   $ bts show --mbox 561737 # from devscripts package

Please also add all people involved in the thread to the CC list.
Otherwise they will not know that someone replied.

I was also bitten by this bug and it took quite a while to figure out
that udisks is the culprit.

Now I will try to summarize everything and hope altogether we will be
able to solve this issue.

### Problem ###

Mounting file system on floppy disks with Nautilus is not possible since
Debian Squeeze.

The problem lies within udisks. Commit ca93d4e2 [1]

        commit ca93d4e2d9e7f483b2fde1725da086e2cca44164
        Author: Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com>
        Date:   Wed Jun 2 15:56:07 2010 +0200

            Fix long hangs on probing nonexistant floppy drives

            A lot of modern machines do not have a floppy drive any more, but still have a
            floppy controller somewhere (or at least the BIOS pretends to). Trying to
            open(/dev/fd0) on these machines causes long hangs, which lead to long desktop
            startup times.

            To fix this, avoid probing floppies for media in update_info().

            https://launchpad.net/bugs/539515

        diff --git a/src/device.c b/src/device.c
        index 763385c..0e87f1d 100644
        --- a/src/device.c
        +++ b/src/device.c
        @@ -4471,7 +4471,8 @@ update_info (Device *device)
             {
               media_available = FALSE;

        -      if (!g_udev_device_get_property_as_boolean (device->priv->d, "ID_CDROM"))
        +      if (!g_udev_device_get_property_as_boolean (device->priv->d, "ID_CDROM") &&
        +          !g_udev_device_get_property_as_boolean (device->priv->d, "ID_DRIVE_FLOPPY"))
                 {
                   int fd;
                   fd = open (device->priv->device_file, O_RDONLY);

always reports false that a floppy is inserted. This problem is reported
in upstream’s freedesktop.org BTS as #30283 [1]. Unfortunately the
developer David Zeuthen will not focus on getting a fix in for this
issue since he focuses on udisks2 where everything seems to work.

### Workarounds ###

1. Edit `/lib/udev/rules.d/80-udisks.rules` as mentioned in [5] to not
label the floppy drive as a floppy drive.

2. Apply the patch attached to the upstream report [6] and build the
package yourself.

3. Mounting the disk running the following from a terminal.

    `udisks --mount /dev/fd0`.

### Roadmap ###

1. Get all bug reports merged together (hopefully accomplished now) and
get the necessary dependencies sorted out. I am in favor of filing a bug
against Nautilus and gvfs and let them be blocked by 561737 (this bug
here). I am doing this for gvfs with this message.

Users experiencing this will look at the reports assigned to Nautilus
and at best against gvfs. Finding this bug will give them the necessary
information about the problem and workarounds faster.

2. Revert the commit ca93d4e2 [1] in udisks introducing this regression
[1]. It would be great if some test packages in some private repository
could be provided.

That would reopen Launchpad report #539515 [3] but closes report #441835
[4]. Also an ticket should be submitted upstream.

3. Update some Squeeze errata and README files to document that issue.
Someone cares to send a patch also upstream [7]?

4. Fix this issue properly. People hit by longer boot times as in
Launchpad #539515 should get their BIOS fixed or should have a
configuration option to disable floppy probing completely.

5. Increase the severity of this report to at least important (even
grave) as udev-daemon also prevents `mount` from working and therefore
breaks unrelated packages. Michael, could you please explain why you
disagree.

Does that sound feasible? Possibly number 4 should be discussed and done
in upstream’s report.

Thanks a lot and let us be constructive to solve this quickly,

Paul

[1] http://cgit.freedesktop.org/udisks/commit/?id=ca93d4e2d9e7f483b2fde1725da086e2cca44164
[2] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30283
[3] https://launchpad.net/bugs/539515
[4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+source/devicekit-disks/+bug/441835
[5] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=561737#75
[6] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=39751
[7] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/udisks
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