SLX HOWTO: Local floppy drives in a mixed SLX environment

Description: This SLX HOWTO describes how you can enable the local floppy drive for your users no matter which client system they log in to, thin, thick or server.

Walkthrough:

Install support for remote floppy drives on thin clients

1. Log in as root on the thin client server in question

2. Download the package ltsp_floppy here.

3. Decompress the package, enter the directory and run the install script.

4. In the [Default] section in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf add the line:

   RCFILE_01 = floppyd

Enable users to mount floppy drives

1. Log in as root on the thin client server in question

2. In /etc/devfs/perms change

   REGISTER ^floppy/.*		PERMISSIONS root.floppy 0660
   to
   REGISTER ^floppy/.*		PERMISSIONS root.floppy 0666

3. Do the same on every workstation

Enable local floppy drive for each user

1. Log in as root on tjener.intern

2. Create a script /etc/skel/.kde/Autostart/floppycheck.sh. with the following content:

   #!/bin/bash
   CLIENT=`echo $DISPLAY | tr 0-9 "-" | sed -e s/-.*//`
   if [ $CLIENT = "ltsp" ]; then
     echo 'drive a: file="$DISPLAY" remote 1.44m mformat_only' > ~/.mtoolsrc
   else
     echo 'drive a: file="/dev/floppy/0" 1.44m mformat_only' > ~/.mtoolsrc
   fi

3. Run these commands in a bash shell:

   for dir in /skole/tjener/home0/*;
   do cp /etc/skel/.kde/Autostart/floppycheck.sh $dir/.kde/Autostart;
   chown --reference=$dir $dir/.kde/Autostart/floppycheck.sh;
   done

Unfortunately, you can only read floppies in Konqueror, so either convince all your users not to use floppies, or install the package mtoolsfm to write to floppies.