[newbie] Writing to floppy disc

[Andrew Barnes]

Numerous bad GUI experiences led me to get more comfortable with the command
line - the nice part to this is that it doesn't matter what
version/distro/etc this is done on.  

>From a command shell/terminal window you can run:

cp [/where/the/file/is] /mnt/floppy

If you want to move the file to the floppy:

mv [/where/the/file/is] /mnt/floppy

If you get a response that your account doesn't have privilege(s) to do this
(and you know the root password), you can use the sudo command rather than
logging in as root.

===================================
How to check and deal with permissions from Command Line:

cd /mnt ; ls -l | grep floppy

That will show the permissions for /mnt/floppy - it should start with d (for
directory, because it is), or there's problems.  The letters after that show
what permissions ([r]ead, [w]rite, e[x]ecute)) there are per user, group and
world/other.  So it'd look something like: "drwxrwx---".

To change the permissions, you can use chmod.  Here's an example:

chmod ugo+rwx /mnt/floppy

...of full privileges to /mnt/floppy.  Not the best thing to do, giving full
permissions to something.  So you can choose specifically using:

chmod u+rwx /mnt/floppy

This will add read/write/execute privs to User - the other priv's to group
and world/other are left as they were.  What if you only wanted to give read
and write priv?

chmod u+rw /mnt/floppy

You can replace the "+" with a "-" to remove privileges. 

-----Original Message-----
From: newbie-admin@vlug.org [mailto:newbie-admin@vlug.org] On Behalf Of John
Bartlett
Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 4:22 PM
To: newbie@vlug.org
Subject: Re: [newbie] Writing to floppy disc

On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 11:20, Bryan wrote:
> I am using Mandrake 9.2 and KDE. I can't figure out how to copy or save
> files to /mnt/floppy. I am able to format a floppy disc though.
> 
> There is a small padlock symbol on the desktop icon for the floppy drive
> and the screen for setting permissions under Properties is greyed out -
> not accessible. But, I notice the box for writing is blank.
> 
> Can anyone telll me how to save or copy to the floppy disc? Change the
> necessary permissions?

Hi Bryan,

I delayed responding for a while as I am a newbie too and cannot even
format a floppy using RedHat 9.

I do know however that if you open KDE or Nautilus from a command screen
as root, you should lose the padlock and be able to copy to the disc. I
don't think there is any way to change to root from within a user KDE
screen.

I probably got some of that wrong but that should ensure that someone
really knowledgeable will put us both right!

How often are you tempted to go back to the dark side?

John

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