Q4OS Forum

Leon

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2026-09-20

Posts: 8

Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

Hello,

Just to start off, I’m a native Windows user and know absolutely nothing about Linux, so I’m being honest and asking you to explain the solution to me as if I were a complete beginner (because I am one). For example, I have no idea how to use the terminal and only use Linux very rarely.

I tried using ChatGPT to get the floppy drive working, but unfortunately, after two hours, I still hadn’t succeeded. The text below was written with the help of ChatGPT because I had absolutely no — or very little — idea of what was actually going on. I apologize in advance for the long text, but I think it's better to include all the details than to leave any out.

My system

I am using:

Q4OS 6.9-deb13u1
Debian GNU/Linux 13 (Trixie)
TDE R14.1.5

System information:

$ get-q4os-version
6.9-deb13u1
$ cat /etc/os-release

PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="13"
VERSION="13 (trixie)"
VERSION_CODENAME=trixie
DEBIAN_VERSION_FULL=13.7
ID=debian
$ tde-config --version

Qt: 3.5.0
TDE: R14.1.5
tde-config: 1.0

I have a physical/internal 3.5-inch floppy drive.

What I would like is very simple:

Insert floppy → computer reads it automatically → floppy appears in Konqueror/Storage Media → open the files graphically, similar to Windows.

The hardware is detected correctly

Linux sees the floppy drive:

$ lsblk -o NAME,TYPE,SIZE,MODEL

NAME   TYPE  SIZE MODEL
fd0    disk  1,4M
sda    disk 76,3G Maxtor 6Y080L0
├─sda1 part 72,4G
├─sda2 part    1K
└─sda5 part  3,9G
sr0    rom  1024M HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8161B
sr1    rom  1024M CW089D ATAPI CD-R/RW

The floppy device exists:

$ ls -l /dev/fd0

brw-rw---- 1 root disk 2, 0 ... /dev/fd0

udisks2 also detects the floppy and both optical drives:

$ udisksctl status

MODEL                     REVISION  SERIAL               DEVICE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maxtor 6Y080L0            YAR41BW0  Y2NGP94E             sda
Floppy Drive                                             fd0
HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8161B  0042      HL-DT-STDVD-ROM_GDR8161B sr0
CW089D ATAPI CD-R/RW      VER_13ZM  CW089D_ATAPI_CD-R_RW sr1
The floppy itself is readable

The floppy is from a Sony Mavica digital camera and contains photos.

blkid detects it as VFAT:

$ sudo blkid /dev/fd0

/dev/fd0: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="620B-AEA5" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat"

When I manually mounted it with:

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

the floppy was readable.

I could see files such as:

MAVICA.HTM
MVC-001F.411
MVC-002F.411
MVC-003F.411
...
MVC-027F.411
System Volume Information

So the floppy and its filesystem appear to be working correctly.

At one point automatic mounting worked

After inserting the floppy, I got:

/dev/fd0 on /media/leon/disk type vfat (... uhelper=udisks2)

So udisks2 was able to automatically mount the floppy at least once.

However, after ejecting and reinserting the floppy, this:

mount | grep fd0

returned nothing.

At that point /media/leon was empty as well.

So automatic mounting is currently not reliable.

The main problem: TDE does not show the floppy

The floppy does not appear in:

Konqueror → Storage Media

The TDE media manager is loaded:

$ dcop kded kded loadedModules | grep mediamanager

mediamanager

However:

$ dcop kded mediamanager fullList

only returns my root partition /dev/sda1; it does not list /dev/fd0.

The output is essentially:

/dev/sda1
72.4GB Festplatte (/dev/sda1)
...
Optical media behaves differently

There is an additional interesting observation:

When I insert a CD, Q4OS detects it and automatically opens a dialog asking me what I want to do with the CD.

So the desktop does detect optical media insertion.

I am not sure whether the CD subsequently appears in Konqueror under “Storage Media”, but the automatic dialog definitely appears.

This makes me wonder whether the problem is specifically related to floppy media/device handling, rather than media handling in general.

I also tried the TDE hardware device tray

I started:

tdehwdevicetray &

A new icon appeared in the system tray, but it only showed the hard disk and not the floppy.

It also printed many messages such as:

[FIXME] UNCLASSIFIED DEVICE ...

mostly concerning ACPI/wakeup and serial devices.

Afterwards the process terminated.

System update

Because the computer had not been used for quite some time, I performed a complete system update:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

and rebooted.

Unfortunately, this did not change the floppy behavior.

What I would like help with

I mainly want to know:

Why does Q4OS/Linux detect /dev/fd0 and udisks2 detect the floppy, but TDE does not show it in Storage Media and does not reliably automount it after reinserting the floppy?

What is the correct way to configure Q4OS/TDE so that a normal internal floppy drive behaves like it does in Windows:

insert floppy → automatically detect/mount it → show it graphically in Konqueror → open the files

I would really appreciate a step-by-step explanation for a Linux beginner, because I have almost no Linux experience and would prefer a graphical solution whenever possible.

Thank you very much for your help!

Taige

Banned

Registered: 2025-08-19

Posts: 105

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

Have you considered giving it a try with a usb floppy drive?
Or, if you have another computer with a floppy drive, try on that and see if anything changes.

Leon

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2026-09-20

Posts: 8

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

Have you considered giving it a try with a usb floppy drive?
Or, if you have another computer with a floppy drive, try on that and see if anything changes.

Yes, I've just tried it. The external drive was detected, and I was able to access the pictures. So floppy disks are generally recognized, but I'd really like to use the internal drive, since that's the main reason I repaired this PC in the first place. Unfortunately, I need the external one for another PC.

I would also really like to understand why the internal drive does not work properly in Q4OS. The system detects the drive, it spins up, and I can even access the files when I mount the floppy manually. So I don't quite understand what is preventing Q4OS from recognizing and displaying the floppy in the normal way.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,424

Website

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

Nothing is broken on your machine, and no setting will fix it: current Linux
ignores the legacy floppy controller in two places.

udev only examines a fixed list of device names (sd*, sr*, nvme*, mmcblk*
...), and fd* is not on it, so it never looks at what is in the drive. Check
it yourself:

udevadm info /dev/fd0 | grep ID_FS

That prints nothing, while the same command on your USB drive prints
ID_FS_TYPE=vfat. TDE lists a floppy only when the system reports a filesystem
on it, so yours stays hidden -- the drive is detected, the disk in it is never
examined. On top of that, the kernel's floppy driver never reports that you
inserted a disk, so nothing can react to it automatically either.

Your USB drive works because it is not a floppy as far as the system is
concerned: it appears as an ordinary disk (/dev/sd?), which does get examined
and does report media changes. Two different code paths, so that test could
not really tell us anything.

Automatic detection is therefore out with the internal drive, on any desktop.
A floppy icon you click works fine, and that is how this was always done:

1.

sudo mkdir -p /media/floppy

2. Add one line to /etc/fstab ("sudo kwrite /etc/fstab"):

/dev/fd0  /media/floppy  vfat  rw,noauto,user,umask=000  0  0

   "user" is what lets you mount it without sudo.

3. Right-click the desktop -> Create New -> Link to Device -> Floppy
   Device..., then fill in Device /dev/fd0 and Mount point /media/floppy.

Insert a disk and click the icon: it mounts and opens in Konqueror, and
right-click gives you Unmount. In a terminal "mount /media/floppy" and
"umount /media/floppy" now work without sudo as well. Always unmount before
you press the eject button -- writes are cached, and on a floppy that is an
easy way to lose a file.

Taige

Banned

Registered: 2025-08-19

Posts: 105

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

Wait a minute, there's something I'm missing.
That is, with the internal reader there is no way to solve the obstacle but with the external reader it is possible. Did I understand correctly?

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,608

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

The second part of the dev team post explains how to configure the system to provide a desktop icon that will allow manual mount/unmount of a floppy on an internal drive.

Taige

Banned

Registered: 2025-08-19

Posts: 105

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

The second part of the dev team post explains how to configure the system to provide a desktop icon that will allow manual mount/unmount of a floppy on an internal drive.

Of course, I still asked why this since he wrote at the beginning:

Nothing is broken on your machine, and no setting will fix it: current Linux
ignores the legacy floppy controller in two places.

So, I deduce that the problem is not really unsolvable, but on the contrary it can be done in another way.

Leon

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2026-09-20

Posts: 8

Re: Internal floppy disk is not shown in Konqueror / Storage Media

Nothing is broken on your machine, and no setting will fix it: current Linux
ignores the legacy floppy controller in two places.

udev only examines a fixed list of device names (sd*, sr*, nvme*, mmcblk*
...), and fd* is not on it, so it never looks at what is in the drive. Check
it yourself:

udevadm info /dev/fd0 | grep ID_FS

That prints nothing, while the same command on your USB drive prints
ID_FS_TYPE=vfat. TDE lists a floppy only when the system reports a filesystem
on it, so yours stays hidden -- the drive is detected, the disk in it is never
examined. On top of that, the kernel's floppy driver never reports that you
inserted a disk, so nothing can react to it automatically either.

Your USB drive works because it is not a floppy as far as the system is
concerned: it appears as an ordinary disk (/dev/sd?), which does get examined
and does report media changes. Two different code paths, so that test could
not really tell us anything.

Automatic detection is therefore out with the internal drive, on any desktop.
A floppy icon you click works fine, and that is how this was always done:

1.

sudo mkdir -p /media/floppy

2. Add one line to /etc/fstab ("sudo kwrite /etc/fstab"):

/dev/fd0  /media/floppy  vfat  rw,noauto,user,umask=000  0  0

   "user" is what lets you mount it without sudo.

3. Right-click the desktop -> Create New -> Link to Device -> Floppy
   Device..., then fill in Device /dev/fd0 and Mount point /media/floppy.

Insert a disk and click the icon: it mounts and opens in Konqueror, and
right-click gives you Unmount. In a terminal "mount /media/floppy" and
"umount /media/floppy" now work without sudo as well. Always unmount before
you press the eject button -- writes are cached, and on a floppy that is an
easy way to lose a file.

Sorry for my late reply, but thank you very much! It works now! Your explanation was very easy to follow, and I really appreciate your help. Thank you!