From kde-linux Wed Nov 13 16:51:56 2013 From: Gaffer <144up () castle-computer ! co ! uk> Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:51:56 +0000 To: kde-linux Subject: Re: [kde-linux] stop empty floppy drive announcement Message-Id: <201311131651.56332.144up () castle-computer ! co ! uk> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-linux&m=138442200918371 Comment inline. On Wednesday 13 November 2013 12:08:54 Duncan wrote: > Felix Miata posted on Tue, 12 Nov 2013 16:06:27 -0500 as excerpted: > > On 2013-11-11 23:43 (GMT-0500) Felix Miata composed: > >> How? Every time I login, focus is stolen from Konsole's > >> restoration by the inane popup announcing the presence of a floppy > >> drive with no media in it. > > > > This is an unresolved bug with likely upstream roots if not > > entirely: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318061 > > The root problem is one of legacy hardware (lack of) features. > Floppy drives are old enough they predate the hardware > removable-media-detect feature found on, for example, optical > (CD/DVD) devices. The only information the BIOS makes available is > that there's a device there, and the only way to see whether there's > actually anything in it is to try it. > > Making problems worse, there's no media-change-detect notification What about pin 34 "Disk change Ready" signal ! > either, so once a floppy is inserted, it can be switched out without > anything at the software level realizing it, so if it goes to write > to the device (or even seek to a different place in the file you had > open for reading), for all it knows the physical media has been > switched out and it's reading/writing an entirely different file on > the new media now! > > The only way to be sure that isn't happening is to actually stat the > file and compare the results to the ones from before to make sure > it's the same thing, before each read/write access. > > And because floppy drives are so physically SLOW, that introduces a > delay as the device is physically accessed. > > At least on CD/DVD devices, while the media-presence/change detection > is rather crude by modern standards, it exists, and the way change > detection is typically supported in software is by polling -- back in > the HAL days (before udisks, as I said earlier in the thread I have > those features disabled now and haven't followed what the current > solution does) there was a notorious feature that polled the CD/DVD > hardware every two seconds to be sure it hadn't changed -- it was > crude, but because the hardware could answer without actually > spinning up the disk to check, it was comparatively fast and normally > happened in the background without disturbing the user. > > Unfortunately, that doesn't work for a floppy, because the device has > to actually re-read the physical media to check whether it has > changed, triggering an audible click and likely a UI-stall as the > floppy spins up and the drive actually rereads the physical sector to > see if it's the same as before. Not only would that constant click > every couple seconds be extremely irritating, it would wear out a > floppy in the drive very fast (perhaps an hour or two) and would > likely kill the drive itself within a few days. > > So that solution, while viable for CD/DVDs that retain that info in > the hardware and can simply return it when queried every couple > seconds, is not viable at all for floppy device hardware. > > > But as I said in the first reply, the world has thankfully moved on > and few machines have floppies any more -- or in the event that they > do, they're often the USB attached version and thus can be physically > unplugged unless they're actually in use. > > > In my opinion, probably the best way for software like kde's device > notification is to ignore floppies entirely. Just skip anything that > the BIOS reports as a floppy. Sure, that means no notification for > floppies at all, but floppy hardware itself is so old it simply > wasn't designed with this sort of feature in mind in the first place, > and it's best to just let sleeping floppies lie. Fortunately they're > now rare, and anybody (like Felix) who *IS* still using them is > surely used to the limitations of the technology and can cope with > it. > > That's better than forcing users to choose between support that is at > best broken for floppies, and disabling auto-detect/auto-mount for > /everything/, thus losing the feature for newer (non-floppy) hardware > that /does/ support the feature well, or at least like CD/DVDs, can > answer a poll in firmware without having to physically spinup the > media. > > But... the same rarity that means few users deal with the problem > also means few developers actually have the hardware to test with, > either. And it's kinda hard to properly set up the floppy-ignore, if > you don't have a floppy device to actually work with to see what you > need to ignore, and to test to see if your proposed solution is > actually going to work in practice or not. > > > Meanwhile, Felix, don't take this the wrong way as I wouldn't presume > to tell you that can't setup and use your systems as you like, but... > > What /is/ your actual use case for floppies? I was thinking about it > and trying to come up with some scenario, some use-case, where I > might find floppies a continued viable solution, and I'm simply > coming up dry, especially where you're not simply using legacy > hardware that you still have, but are actually buying and attaching > new floppy drives to any motherboards that continue to support it, on > new installations. I just can't see the use-case where that's > justified. > > And even if I had a collection of existing floppies and didn't want > to put all of the data for 1000+ of them on a $2 2-gig USB > thumbdrive, I'd buy the USB-attached floppy-drives that I could > plug-in when needed (and just as importantly, unplug when NOT > needed), and thus wouldn't have to deal with the problems of an > internally attached floppy-drive. If you're booting from floppy, > anything remotely new should support booting from USB-attached floppy > as well as it does booting from direct-attached floppy, and if we're > talking hardware that's old enough it doesn't support booting from > USB, then it's also old enough that buying new floppy-drives and > attaching them to it, as you said you do when you can, doesn't make > sense either. > > I just don't see the case where either USB thumbdrives, or CD/DVD > read/ writers (of comparable cost to floppy devices, possibly even > cheaper since the antique-hardware tax that applies to floppy devices > isn't as steep for CD/DVD writers yet), or worst-case, USB-attached > floppies, doesn't make more sense than legacy mobo > flat-cable-attached floppy- devices. -- Best Regards: Gaffer Pontefract Linux User Group. ___________________________________________________ This message is from the kde-linux mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-linux. 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