On Tuesday 02 October 2001 11:42, you wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 10:49:47AM -0500, Ben Stallings wrote:
> > Here's my problem... if I have the CD-ROM (or DVD) drive in the bay at
> > startup and then put in the floppy drive later, I can't mount it RW
> > because hdc definited itself at startup as read-only.  The only way I've
> > found to redefine hdc as writeable is to restart linux with the floppy
> > drive in the bay.  Is there a better way?
>
> 1. Do a
>       ls -l /dev/hdc
>
>    if it doesn't look like
>       brw-rw----    1 root     disk      22,   0 Aug  8 11:05 /dev/hdc
>
>    do a
>       chmod 660 /dev/hdc

Tried that, first thing when I was told the device was "write-protected."  (I 
put this in quotes because I hadn't seen Linux call something 
"write-protected" before, just read-only or unwritable.)  The same error 
message occurred after doing the chmod, even though /dev/hdc was then listed 
as rw.

> 2. What linux distribution are you using, what kernel (uname -a)

Yellow Dog 2.0 is my distribution, 2.2.19-1i is my kernel.

Mike Hick suggested recompiling the kernel with the IDE Floppy driver module. 
 Unless I'm mistaken, this is not an IDE or SCSI connection, but a 
proprietary Apple interface.  I was pleased that Yellow Dog recognized it at 
all, let alone allowed me to hot-swap drives.  But being able to write to 
floppies is important sometimes, so I figured I'd ask.  --Ben