Bug 144098

Summary: RH Desktop without floppy - sometimes hangs, always complains
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Reporter: Tim Skirvin <tskirvin>
Component: kernelAssignee: Brian Maly <bmaly>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.0CC: barryn, katzj, notting, petrides, riel
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Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-04-19 20:14:41 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Tim Skirvin 2005-01-04 15:40:02 UTC
Description of problem:

Our RH Desktop systems do not have floppy drives.  On boot, we always
get error messages indicating that the system has been unable to find
the floppy drive; these error messages are annoying, but ultimately
harmless.  The bigger problem is that kudzu occasionally hangs on the
same step, looking for hardware...

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

RH Desktop 3 Release 4, running on a Sun W2100z Opteron workstation.


How reproducible:

Errors are shown every time we boot on a default RH Desktop install.    


Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
  
Actual results:

insmod:
/lib/modules/2.4.21-27.0.1.ELsmp/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.o:
init_module: No such device
insmod: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module
parameters, includ
ing invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
      You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
insmod:
/lib/modules/2.4.21-27.0.1.ELsmp/kernel/drivers/block/floppy.o: insmod b
lock-major-2 failed

(note: transcribed, not cut-and-paste)

Expected results:

Shouldn't give this error message every time.  Shouldn't occasionally
hang either.


Additional info:

This may be two unrelated problems, but that's as much debugging as I
can get away with.

The hanging problems can be solved by booting into single-user mode,
removing /etc/sysconfig/hwconf, and re-running kudzu.  This is not an
adequate solution for our entire network, however, especially when
these problems appear on random boots.  I don't want to have to run
this on every boot (or shutdown)...

Comment 2 Bill Nottingham 2005-01-04 21:00:51 UTC
Add 'alias floppy off' to /etc/modules.conf; this will prevent the driver from
being loaded.

The hang on floppy load is a kernel driver issue. Unfortunately, the underlying
issue is that it's impossible to detect the presence of a floppy drive without
loading the driver.

Comment 3 Tim Skirvin 2005-01-04 22:43:54 UTC
This works, and is scriptable.  So I'm good.  Thanks!

Comment 4 Tim Skirvin 2005-01-04 22:45:29 UTC
I should note, I don't know if this solves the hwconf problems yet...

Comment 5 Jim Paradis 2005-04-26 23:26:24 UTC
Tim, can you follow up with your experience?  I tend to believe that the
workaround would deal with the hwconf issue as well, but I'd like confirmation...


Comment 6 Tim Skirvin 2005-04-27 13:39:34 UTC
hwconf hasn't complained again since I started fixing it in modules.conf.

Comment 7 Red Hat Bugzilla 2007-03-18 22:28:29 UTC
User jparadis's account has been closed