Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 144098
RH Desktop without floppy - sometimes hangs, always complains
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:07:05 EST
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)...
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.
This works, and is scriptable. So I'm good. Thanks!
I should note, I don't know if this solves the hwconf problems yet...
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...
hwconf hasn't complained again since I started fixing it in modules.conf.
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