I physically will test the actual success of the procedure documented 
below on Monday at my office.  However, using the network, I have 
performed the operation you suggested (modprobe floppy) as root; here is 
the output via script:

^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# modprobe floppy
^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# ls -la /dev/floppy
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 3 Jun 19 09:50 ^[[0m^[[01;36m/dev/floppy^[[0m -> 
^[[40;33;01mfd0^[[0m
^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# ls -la /dev/fd0
brw-rw----. 1 root floppy 2, 0 Jun 19 09:50 ^[[0m^[[40;33;01m/dev/fd0^[[0m
^[[m^[]0;ykarant@jb344:/home/ykarant^G[root@jb344 ykarant]# exit
exit

Script done on Sun 19 Jun 2011 09:51:49 AM PDT

The above may be unreadable (I used cat -v to convert the control 
characters to printable characters).  However, after modprobe floppy, 
/dev/floppy appears and this is a link to the actual device, /dev/fd0

I fully understand that the /dev entries are created at boot time if the 
driver actually is present (generally, in kernel space, but there are 
exceptions where a driver crosses between kernel and user space).  As it 
is clear that the driver is present, why is the driver not autoloaded 
during boot if the hardware is present?

In which file(s) in SL6 does one make the modification to force the 
existence of /dev/fd0 at each boot?  As far as I can tell, SL6 is 
loading drivers for all of the other physical hardware on the unit.

The issue with /dev/fd/x is clear after reconsideration of the link to a 
pts; however, this is in my opinion an example of a poor naming 
convention (perhaps for historical reasons) to what appears to be 
overloading in the OO sense.

(If you ask why I need a floppy and a zip drive, it is to read archival 
media, some mine, mostly colleagues, without having to find the 
appropriate USB or IEEE 1394 external interface device, manipulating 
cables, and having a figurative octopus on my desk.  Most of our current 
workstations have neither a floppy nor a zip drive.  The zip drive that 
is an IDE device was detected and mapped by SL6 to a /dev/sd as former 
RHEL release /dev/hd devices are now mapped to /dev/sd devices.)

Thanks,

Yasha Karant

On 06/19/2011 12:22 AM, Stephan Wiesand wrote:
> On Jun 19, 2011, at 04:59 , Yasha Karant wrote:
>
>> I have installed lshw.  lshw does seem to give an extensive listing, but lshw-gui does not seem to give much.  As with lshw, does lshw-gui need to be run by root?
>>
>> Also, I have a real 1.44 Mbyte floppy drive installed that goes to the floppy drive controller on the mother board (this particular MSI motherboard has SATA, EIDE, and floppy controllers and connectors on the motherboard).  It worked fine under RHEL 5 (CentOS 5.6) on this motherboard.  Under RHEL 6 (SL 6), I find:
>>
>> ls -la /dev/fd/*
>> ls: cannot access /dev/fd/255: No such file or directory
>> ls: cannot access /dev/fd/3: No such file or directory
>> lrwx------. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/0 ->  /dev/pts/0
>> lrwx------. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/1 ->  /dev/pts/0
>> lrwx------. 1 ykarant ykarant 64 Jun 18 19:49 /dev/fd/2 ->  /dev/pts/0s
>>
>> but I cannot seem to access these via a mount, even as root, to access a MS-DOS floppy.  Obviously, I am doing something wrong, but what? Moreover, the mtools (that provides MS-DOS compatibility) used to access the floppy drive as A: but now does nothing.  Presumably, once I understand how to access the floppy drive, things will work.  Would a ln -s /dev/floppy to /dev/fd/0 as well as a ln -s /dev/fd0 to /dev/fd/0 work?
>
> Probably not ;-) Try  "echo 'I am not a floppy drive'>  /dev/fd/1" for a hint what these actually are.
>
>> Note that the output of lshw does not show the floppy drive, although the hardware listing utility of RHEL 5 did show this. This is the same hardware with no change to the motherboard BIOS -- the motherboard BIOS utility does show the floppy.
>
> Do floppy devices appear after "modprobe floppy"?
>
>> I realize that this might have to be re-done upon the next upgrade (to SL 6.1), but otherwise should work until /dev is overwritten.
>
>
> It's created at boot time.
>