block-major-2: How to disable floppy drive detection at boot

**ls_linux** · 06-15-2003, 12:09 AM

Greetings All,

I'm experiencing troubles to pass the autoconfiguring devices process on a Dell Inspiron 600M notebook which results in stalling the boot process.

The error message is at Autoconfiguring devices:
Autoconfiguring devices... modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module block-major-2
(repeated)

block-major-2 seems to be caused by the lack of a floppy drive in this laptop. Autoconfiguring seeks for floppy drive and causes the boot halt when doesn't find one.
If block-major-2 problem is due to the lack of floppydrive indeed,
is there any Cheat code that could help boot with no floppy drive detection?

Only failsafe will pass by the modprobe major 2 halt and boot it.
All the rest of hardware is Beautifully supported in the Knoppix distro--thanks to Klaus and all that did this great job!. (well, the Intel WiFi is only backwards compatible, but still!).

Thank you for reading and your help. Since the floppy drive is getting obsolete, it will certainly benefit others too.

PS: I tried, of course, the first that came to mind:
knoppix nofloppy --the same modprobe problem,
... nofd --the same modprobe problem,
... nofd0 --the same modprobe problem...
... nousb as suggested: -the same modprobe problem...
disable the Floppy drive from the bootup sequence [BIOS] -the same modprobe problem...

**Stephen** · 06-15-2003, 01:01 AM

A google search on the error has a few post that mentions usb so I'd give knoppix nousb a try, you might also try disabling the floppy seek in the BIOS as well.

**garyng** · 06-15-2003, 01:12 AM

disable USB doesn't sound like a solution(but a good way to pinpoint the problem) even though that is quite likely the cause. If this is in fact the case, I believe it should be reported to the kernel folks as a modern machine without USB would severely limit its usefulness.

**ls_linux** · 06-15-2003, 01:22 AM

Thanks, but no, nousb doesn't help.
There is no usb or any other kind floppy drive attached to this machine. There is no floppy drive as well in bios. There was a boot from floppy in the boot up sequence though, I disabled that in BIOS, but the modprobe problem described above persists.