Ubuntu: Disable Floppy Drive

Introduction

I was creating a new virtual machine in my development environment and was getting a kernel error complaining about the floppy drive.  Well I use VMWare Fusion and I don’t configure the virtual machine to have a floppy.  This time I configured the VM to use UEFI.  Wouldn’t you know it, UEFI creates a floppy controller.  And guess what? You can’t disable it. Follow the steps below to take care of the problem.

Steps

    1. First we need to blacklist the floppy kernel module. So type the following
      sudo echo "blacklist floppy" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-floppy.conf
    2. Next we need to update the initial ramdisk. Type the follosing:
      sudo update-initramfs -u
    3. Now update grub. Type:
      sudo update-grub
    4. Time to reboot the system. Type:
      sudo reboot

Conclusion

Just a few commands and your console won’t be plastered with floppy drive errors.

Opnsense Stuck at Booting on J1900 Motherboaard

Introduction

I have an Asrock motherboard with a J1900 CPU.  I was setting up a new Opnsense firewall.  Well FreeBSD hence Opnsense has a video bug.  The firewall boots and runs.  You just don’t get the console screen. Below is a quick guide on getting the video working.

Steps

  1. Power on the firewall.
  2. Hit the spacebar at the boot screen.
  3. Choose number 3 to set boot options.
  4. Type the following:
    set kern.vty=sc
  5. Then type:
    boot
  6. Once the firewall boots login as root.
  7. Select the option to exit to a shell.
  8. Type the following:
    echo 'kern.vty="sc"' > /boot/loader.conf.local
  9. Type:
    reboot

Conclusion

Sometimes those little bugs can be a pain.