I have seen too many people giving newbies advice on how to access their removable drives using
the commandline. Too many newbies don't want to do it that way, and I don't think they should
have to. I don't mount my drives using a commandline. This tutorial is meaningless to those
who have distros with Supermount working, but by default, Mandrake 8.1 doesn't work. Here's
how to fix those broken icons.
To determine if your icons are broken and need replacing, insert a floppy disk and/or a CD-ROM into your
computer's drive(s). Now, click on the corresponding icon on the Mandrake 8.1 KDE desktop.
This will try to mount the drive and display the contents.
You should get an error message like this:
If you don't, then your icons aren't broken.
If you have recieved that error, delete your drive icons from your desktop. We will make new
ones that work. Do this by selecting them with your mouse, then pushing
Del on your keyboard.
Alternately, you can use the Delete command from the right-click menu:
Now, right-click on an empty place on your desktop. Select
Create New >
Floppy Device...
You should see this menu:
If not, then you are probably using Gnome, which I can't help you with. Sorry.
You will then be confronted with a dialog box with some tabs at the top.
Type in a name for your icon.
Then go to the
Device tab. Select from the list the proper device (usually /dev/fd0).
When you click on the proper device, the mount point will be set according to your fstab file.
This means that it should be just fine to use the default. Click
OK and you are ready
to test out your new floppy icon.
Click on the floppy icon. It should open up a new window with the contents of the floppy
disk in it.
Don't forget to right-click on the floppy icon and click
Unmount before you eject it.
Now you can repeat the same steps above to create a CD-ROM icon, if yours is broken. And if your
CD-ROM won't eject, remember to unmount the drive first, or you can right-click the CD-ROM
icon and select
Eject. Either way it should work just fine.